My Hero Is My Dad!
by Light-Eco-Sage
Summary: There were a couple of things that Midoriya Izuku had been told about his father: 1- He lived and worked overseas. 2- His quirk is breathing fire. But one of those is a lie to protect him from the knowledge that young Izuku was actually the son of the Number One hero: All Might. Biological Dad Might AU story, no relationships. Complete. Sequel will be posted soon...
1. Chapter 1

**My Hero Is My Dad?!**

 **Summary: Izuku Midoriya only ever knew a couple of things about his father. He breathes fire and works overseas. But one of those things is a lie, and Izuku's life changes forever when his favorite hero of all time, All Might, suddenly returns to Japan from years of hero work in America for an unknown reason.**

 **Disclaimer: Boku no Hero Academia/My Hero Academia is created by Kohei Horikoshi, definitely not me.**

 **LES: This story is a Biological Dad AU where All Might is Izuku's father and Hisashi Midoriya does not exist. My idea is that while Toshinori was spending his time in America away from All For One, he made occasional trips back to Japan for various reasons. Usually to help with a major villain and then to go back to America. It was on one of these trips that he met Inko Midoriya. They were not in a real relationship. They were friendly with each other, but got drunk and slept with each other. The result was Izuku. When this story is turned into a series, the relationships that I am considering adding are Izuku/Ochacko, Todoroki/Momo, and possibly Kirishima/Ashido. NONE of these pairings are going to be in this first part if they bother anyone. The first part, and all of the parts, will mainly focus on Dad Might and Izuku because even they are my father/son OTP, and I largely consider the romantic ships to be secondary to this. We will also be getting Dadzawa and Shinsou eventually (Another father/son pairing).  
As an author, I believe firmly in laying all of my pairings cards up front and center.  
Oh, and one last thing... I promise. This story does have some violence, because I decided to go into All Might's first fight against All For One and the aftermath. If you've seen the show past the first episode, you will know that All Might got messed up from that fight really badly, and I spent so much time Googling various aspects of All Might's injuries that Google thinks I'm dying. But it's not perfect. In canon, it said that Toshinori lost "half of his respiratory system", but the total removal of one lung is a seriously major operation which is usually not even considered except for cases of extremely bad cancer because of the high fatality rate of the surgery. I don't really see a doctor okaying All Might for this surgery with the risks involved. Don't worry, his left lung is messed up, but not totally removed.  
Sorry for the long author's note. Without any further ado, let's get going!**

 **ACT I: CHILDHOOD**

 **Chapter 1**

* * *

It was a question that Inko Midoriya had been dreading for years. She had been keeping herself busy washing the dishes from dinner when she felt a light tug on her skirt. She looked down into the wide and innocent eyes of her precious four year old son. "Do you want something, little man?" Inko asked, quickly drying her hands off on her skirt and kneeling down to her son's level.

"Mommy, where's my daddy?" Izuku asked.

Inko's breath caught in her throat. Somehow, she knew that this question was coming. Now that Izuku was having more contact with other children, of course he would notice that most families were so-called 'nuclear' families. Thankfully, she had four years to think about this. From the time she had found out she was pregnant, she'd known that she couldn't tell her child the truth, at least for a very long time. She'd had a lot of time to think of a story. She opened her arms wide. "Come here." She said, and Izuku obediently jumped into his mother's arms. Inko stood up and carried the small boy over to the couch and sat down.

"So, you want to know about your father?" Inko asked.

"Yeah. All of the other kids always talk about their dads. But I don't know mine at all. Kacchan says that a father is a man who stays around moms all the time and help raise children. But we don't have any men around at all."

"Well, Kacchan is… sort of right." Inko said slowly. "But, sometimes, a father can't be around all the time. Sometimes they have to work far away to take care of their families." Inko reached over to the side table and pulled over an envelope. The envelope was a business envelope with the company information written in English and with an address in America. However, the delivery address was written by hand in both English and Japanese. The occasional envelope filled with American currency was the only contact that Inko had with Izuku's father since the day of his birth. "You see, he sends us money to support us."

And that was about the only thing Izuku's father could do. To be honest, it wasn't like she had any sort of real relationship with Yagi Toshinori, the man who fathered her son. They were friends, of a sort, that got drunk one night and had things go too far. Finding out that she was pregnant had caused the both of them a lot of stress. At first, he had made comments about marrying her and bringing her with him back to America. But Inko had been the one to turn him down.

Go to America? She didn't know if she wanted to pack up her whole life with a child on the way and move to a foreign land. Despite his assurances that he would take care of her, she knew no one in America and knew that she would be miserable there, especially since she couldn't say that she loved this man.

Neither one of them ever talked about the possibility of him staying in Japan. Inko didn't know why, but he never wanted to stay in Japan for more than a few days at a time. He only really came back to Japan when forced to by the public. So for reasons known only to him, it was out of the question.

So they had gone their separate ways. Inko had contacted him when his son was born, and Toshinori had started sending anonymous cash to Inko as unofficial child support.

"Does he not want to be around me?" Izuku asked, tears starting to form in his eyes.

"Oh, sweetie." Inko sighed. She could still remember the look on Izuku's father's face when he tried to propose to her for the sake of their child. For once, he had seemed scared out of his wits and without his famous smile, but his resolve had been firm. "He does want to know you. And you will get to know him. I promise you'll meet him someday."

"Extra-special promise?" Izuku asked.

"Extra-special promise." Inko agreed. Him being able to meet his father someday had always been in the agreement between Inko and Toshinori.

* * *

Over the years, Inko had been forced to come up with several other lies about Izuku's father. When she took Izuku to the doctor to find out why he hadn't developed a quirk yet, she couldn't very well tell the doctor the truth about Izuku's father's quirk. Mainly because she didn't know what his quirk was. No one knew what his quirk was for sure. But she knew that he did have a quirk, so she made one up that was completely unrelated to his abilities. Fire breathing was a fairly common quirk and no one would think twice about it.

If her son suddenly manifested his father's quirk, her lie would have blown up in her face. But she had all ready begun to suspect that her son was one of the few people to be born without a quirk.

That night, after Izuku had cried himself to sleep. Inko picked up her phone. After hesitating for about half an hour, she found the certain number in her address book and dialed it. She was not entirely familiar with the time difference between Japan and wherever Izuku's father was in America, but as near as she could figure it had to be sometime in the morning.

As she expected, it went to voice mail. "Hello again, Toshinori." Inko said softly so her son would not hear. "It's Inko, I..." At once, she began to regret calling him. What exactly did she expect him to do? Be disappointed? Come flying back to Japan? She knew he wouldn't. "I just found out that Izuku doesn't have a quirk. I'm sorry." And she quickly hung up.

* * *

( **New York City, America** )

It was well after midnight before All Might, real name Toshinori Yagi, could drag himself back into his penthouse. He almost walked past the answering machine on his way to the kitchen before he noticed that he had a missed call.

A little confused, since most of the people that he knew called him on his cell, he took a detour to the answering machine and playing the message. He was a little shocked when he heard the voice, since it was someone he hadn't heard from in years.

"Hello again, Toshinori." A female voice said in Japanese. "It's Inko. I..." There was a brief pause and Toshinori waited impatiently for the message to continue. Even though he'd had no contact with his son, not even a picture, the child was nearly always on his mind in someway. It took a couple of seconds for Inko to start speaking again. "I just found out that Izuku doesn't have a quirk. I'm sorry." And then the message ended.

To be honest, at first Toshinori was not incredibly surprised. After all, Inko could not know, but the boy's father was technically quirkless. One For All could only be passed on to another if the holder means for it to be passed on, and Toshinori did not mean for anything to be passed on that night with Inko, let alone his quirk.

A part of Toshinori was longing to get on the next plane to Tokyo, to meet his son for the first time, and to reassure him that being without a quirk was not as bad as it might seem. But the hero quickly decided that would do more harm than good. Being without a quirk in this superhuman world was hard, and pretending it wasn't was just a lie.

Toshinori couldn't help but feel sorry for the boy. If only he'd gotten his mother's quirk. Inko's quirk was not really that impressive, but if it had been passed on at all, there would have been the chance that the quirk would mutate in their child and become a stronger version of her slight telekinesis. Even still, having a weak quirk was seen as better than having no quirk at all.

Toshinori briefly considered calling back, but then he decided against it. What could he say? It was not like Inko would allow him to speak to his son. And even more, it wasn't like he could confess to either his son or Inko that he was the one responsible for his son being quirkless. Instead, he picked up the latest payment to Inko that he was planning to send in the morning. He opened the envelope again and added a short note along with the cash. "Everything will be fine. -YT"


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

(Six Years Later)

It happened so fast that that had not Izuku brought it to her attention, she probably wouldn't have known in the first place. Inko nearly jumped out of her skin when Izuku rushed into the house, the front door slamming on the wall and scaring her half to death. "Mom!" Izuku yelled.

"Good heavens, Izuku!" Inko gasped. "Don't slam the door like that!"

"Oh… sorry, mom." Izuku at least looked sorry as he rushed into the kitchen. He was so excited that he was bouncing on his feet like he used to do as a child. "Mom, mom, mom, did you see? Did you see?!"

"See what? Calm down, Izuku. What happened?" Inko chuckled.

"Look, mom!" Izuku held his cellphone up to Inko's face. Inko took the phone from her son's hands and held it a proper distance away from her face so that she could read properly. It was open to a hero news site that her son practically stalked and she knew who he was excited about before she even saw his name.

There was only one hero that could get Izuku this excited, and that was the hero All Might. Inko didn't know if she should cry when she discovered that her son had fixated himself on All Might. It felt like a cruel trick of the universe for Izuku to be that fixated on a man without knowing that man was actually his father. She pulled herself out of her thoughts and read the headlines, and gasped.

All Might was moving his agency from New York City to Tokyo?!

"Mom, Mom! Do you see?! All Might is moving to Japan! Can we go to his agency? Please please pleasepleaseplease?" Izuku asked, bouncing up and down even more with his excitement.

It was pretty common for most heroes to have open agencies, which meant that people could walk in freely. Mostly it was just people asking for autographs. "Oh, dear, I'm not sure if the Number One hero would have an open agency." Inko said. "Was it open when he was in America?"

"No." Izuku said. "But we can still see him, right?" His eyes got even wider, now turning on the Puppy Dog Look (TM).

"When will he come to Japan?" She asked.

Izuku briefly scanned through the article. "Next week. Sunday."

Inko sighed. "Well… I suppose. But you have to promise not to bother him. He's the Number One hero, and will probably be very busy."

"I promise! I promise!" Izuku cheered happily, and then rushed back to his room, loudly choosing which of his All Might merchandise to take if he got the chance for an autograph.

Inko sighed, picked up her address book and flipped to the page that had Toshinori's number on it. Should she call him? Give him warning? No matter what she knew he wouldn't break the illusion, but perhaps he deserved some sort of warning if he might come face-to-face with his son for the first time. She eventually decided that she would call him, but late tonight after Izuku fell asleep. She set aside the address book for later.

* * *

Later that night, after she was sure that Izuku had fallen asleep for real, Inko locked herself in her room with her cellphone, hesitated a moment, and then dialed his number. After a few rings, someone picked up and spoke in English. "Toshinori here."

"Hello, Toshinori. It's Inko." She said in Japanese. Her grasp on English had faded since High School, after all. She couldn't hold a conversation in the language like she used to. Obviously like Yagi Toshinori could having spent over a decade in America.

"Oh, Inko!" Toshinori instantly switched back to Japanese. "This is a… surprise. I think the last time you contacted me like this was..."

"When I called about Izuku being quirkless. I remember." Inko answered.

"So… I suppose the boy is still quirkless?" Toshinori asked slowly, as through he was afraid to offend her.

"Yes. Even though the doctor told him that he was unlikely to get a quirk due to his x-rays, he still spent years trying to move objects or breathe fire."

"Breathe fire?" Toshinori asked, confused.

"I had to tell the doctor that the father could do something." Inko said. "And, no, I've never seen him perform any feats of strength like your quirk allows."

"Has it..." There was a pause on the other end of the line. Inko thought she heard a door being shut and locked. "Has it caused him any trouble… with the other children?"

"I..." Inko paused, trying to control her tears.

"Inko?" Toshinori asked.

"He gets bullied. He won't tell me who does it." Inko whispered, trying to keep her tears under control. "I don't think he has any friends. He's never asked to bring anyone over."

There was a deep sigh on the other end of the line. "I'm sorry. I really wish I could have been there for him."

"That's what I'm calling about." Inko said. "We just got the news that you're moving back to Japan after all these years."

"Yes, well… I have business coming up in Japan very soon, and after that is accomplished, there will be no more need for me to be in America any longer."

Inko didn't bother with trying to ask him what sort of business. Hero business, as far as she could guess. She was not nearly as familiar with hero news as her son. "I've actually called to give you a small warning. You see, Izuku really looks up to you… All Might, I mean."

For several seconds, there was silence on the other end, and then she heard Toshinori's breathless voice. "Really?"

"Yes, he saw that debut video of yours when he was really young and firmly believed that you are the best hero to have ever lived." Inko told him. "Everything I buy for him is something All Might." Inko didn't expect him to reply, and she was right. It seemed that he couldn't speak. "He's begging me to take him to Tokyo, to see your agency when it opens up on Sunday. I wanted to give you a warning that we will be there on Sunday, and he will probably ask that you autograph one of his posters or something. I'm not sure what he's decided to ask you to autograph."

"Thanks for letting me know, Inko." Toshinori said, shortly. "I will do my absolute best to treat him like any other young fan."

"Thank you." Inko said.

"But..." Toshinori began, shocking Inko a little. "Do we still have to keep this from him? He's… nine years old now, right?"

"I just… I don't know how he'll react." Inko said. "And there's you coming back to Japan after all this time. I don't know the details, but something made you leave, and now something is bringing you back. And anything that can draw the attention of the number one hero like that can't possibly be safe."

"I won't lie, it's not." Toshinori said. "But that's why I'm coming back. To put an end to the villainy that I couldn't end years ago."

"I'll think about it." Inko said. "But I'm definitely not telling him until after Sunday, no matter what."

"I agree." Toshinori said. "In fact, I would prefer to wait until after my business is concluded."

"Thank you, Toshinori. We'll be there on Sunday." Inko paused. "And… whatever you are facing… take care of yourself. For our son's sake."

"I'll… do my best. Thank you for the call, Inko." And with that, Toshinori hung up.

* * *

Thousands of miles away, in America, Toshinori set his phone down, staring blankly at the now empty walls. The penthouse had been almost entirely stripped, and most of his possessions were stored in boxes waiting for the move this weekend.

His silent contemplation of his child was interrupted by the entrance of his single sidekick, Sir Nighteye. "I've got the documents you've requested, All Might." He said, handing the documents over stiffly. "But I don't understand. I've all ready used my Foresight and predicted that you have a high likelihood of survival."

"But your Foresight was not clear enough to give a definitive answer." All Might reminded him. "It never hurts to be prepared. Besides, I'm just making some adjustments. You'll do as a witness?" All Might asked as he took the documents from Sir Nighteye and began to look them over.

Sir Nighteye watched silently as All Might glanced over the contents of his Will. He crossed out some numbers to the amounts that were promised to different institutions, lowering the amount given to them by a substantial amount. And then when he finished with that, he took the remainder and wrote for it to be put into a trust for someone named Izuku Midoriya. He handed the Will back to Sir Nighteye. "Please have that notarized."

Sir Nighteye accepted the document. "Who is this Izuku Midoriya? You've just left him substantial wealth."

Toshinori fell silent. And then he spoke. "You must swear that you'll never tell anyone without my permission, the permission of the boy's mother, or the boy himself when he comes of age."

"I promise." Sir Nighteye said easily. His quirk often left him with the knowledge of the exact time and nature of a person's death. He had long ago learned the value of secrets.

"Years ago… I had a short… (I'd hardly call it a relationship…) relationship with a woman while in Japan. There is a child." Toshinori answered. "That child is Izuku Midoriya."

"I see. Are you keeping him a secret because of All For One?" Sir Nighteye asked.

"He has no quirk to get stolen." Toshinori said. "But I still won't put it past All For One to kidnap the child of the current holder of One For All just to cause me more pain."

"Does the boy know that you are his father?" Sir Nighteye asked.

"No. It seems that his mother told Izuku that his father breathes fire. I… just got off the phone with her. Apparently the boy is an All Might fan and wants to be there when the Tokyo agency opens."

"Then I suppose it's a good thing that you've always been good with your young fans. You could show a small amount of affection for the boy and no one would be the wiser."

Toshinori laughed dryly. "No. Things are different in Japan. I might have gotten a little too used to America. An autograph, maybe a picture, and that's all." Toshinori sighed. "Besides, I can't allow myself to be distracted. You've gotten the news coming out of Japan just like I have. All For One is on the move again. I have to stop him. That is the purpose for which One For All was cultivated in each generation."

Sir Nighteye straightened out the documents and began to head for the door, but he was stopped when All Might called to him.

"If… if something terrible does happen to me… see that my wishes in the Will are carried out. And… keep an eye on the boy."

Sir Nighteye turned back to face his mentor. "Of course, All Might. I'd do anything for you."

"I know. Thank you, my friend." Toshinori stood up and stretched. "Well, I suppose that's it, then. Is everything ready to move from the agency?"

"Everything has been packed, sir." Sir Nighteye said.

"Good. Let's go." All Might said, moving towards the future.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

(Sunday)

Izuku was excited, but Inko was disquieted. All the way to the bullet train and the short trip to Tokyo, her son kept bouncing excitedly on his seat, clutching his favorite All Might poster to his chest. He had eventually decided that having this poster (his rarest and most valuable poster) signed would be the smartest thing. That would further increase the value and rarity of the poster.

Inko kept her eyes on the scenery as they sped past. At least with the phone call, Toshinori had warning that they were going to be there today. But this was still the very first time he would ever see his son. No one could know how it would go.

And, not for the first time, she was so glad that her son took after her and not his father. Izuku got his untamed hair from his father, but no one would look twice at the young boy. But it did make her grow even more concerned if he found out about Toshinori being his father before he was ready. How could you even begin to explain to a child that the man they've looked up to for most of their life was actually their father?

She was so lost in her thoughts that she missed most of Izuku's excited muttering until he spoke in a louder voice. "Are you excited, Mom?"

Inko sighed, and lied. "Sure I am." At her words, Izuku flashed her a bright smile ( _so much like his father_ ) and began staring at their tickets. Inko just knew that he was trying to decide if the tickets were too expensive for them to make regular trips to Tokyo.

Izuku was practically vibrating with excitement the entire way. This was just the climax of one of the first good weeks he'd had at school in a long time. When he told his classmates that he was going to Tokyo to see All Might, for the first time in his life it was like they forgot he was quirkless. Kacchan was still cold and distant, but even he didn't speak a work to Izuku all week. For the first time in his life, his peers spoke to him about something besides being quirkless, because he was lucky enough to be going to Tokyo to see All Might himself!

In order to keep Izuku busy, Inko told him to keep track of their stop. His countdown to their stop was a little annoying, but at least it stopped him from jumping up and down in his seat and annoying the other passengers.

Finally, they arrived to the proper stop, and a great many people got off the train with Inko and Izuku. A little panicked, Inko reached out for Izuku's hand. "Take my hand and don't run off." She told him, and he took her hand without complaint. So they set off, Inko making sure that she kept a firm grip on Izuku's hand as they walked down the crowded streets.

It had been a couple of years since Inko had visited Tokyo, but even she could tell that the city was busier than normal, and the crowds all seemed to be moving in the same direction. _So many people are here to see Toshinori._ Inko realized.

It was not a long walk to the address that Izuku had given to her, and the place was absolutely impossible to miss, with the enormous crowd gathered around the building. There was a stage set up in front of the building and the whole road was blocked off for the crowd's safety.

"Look, Mom! It's All Might's sidekick, Sir Nighteye!" Izuku pointed excitedly with his poster.

"Really? And what can he do?" Inko asked. Her son was a fount of knowledge when it came to Superhero quirks and just loved to talk about them.

"His quirk is Foresight!" Izuku answered instantly. "It allows him to see the possible futures of anyone he touches, but he can only do it once a day. He's All Might's only sidekick right now. He rarely takes on sidekicks at all. He's so powerful and great that he doesn't need the support of an army of sidekicks like most heroes. Sir Nighteye takes care of the battle planning, and All Might..." Izuku threw a few fake punches to indicate All Might going into battle.

As they moved closer, they could hear that Sir Nighteye and a few police officers were giving orders to the crowd, mostly for the adults to stay further back to allow children up in the front of the crowd. _Does he always plan for children being in the front, or is he doing this because he knows his son will be in the crowd?_ Inko wondered to herself.

"Oh, Mom! Can I go up to the front with the other kids? Please please please?" Izuku asked.

Inko sighed. "Okay. But you have to promise me that you'll stay there and will not leave until I come and get you. Do you promise?"

"I promise! Thanks, Mom!" Inko followed him as far as the police officers keeping the adults back. Once they saw a little boy coming through, they safely extracted Izuku from the crowd and directed him up to the front. Thanks to Izuku being small for his age, he was able to find a place for himself front and center between two other boys. Inko stayed back with the adults. Most of the others around her also seemed to be parents who had children up in the front area. She was jostled around a few times by other children rushing to the front, but she never took her eyes off her son for more than a couple of seconds.

For once, Izuku was completely happy. Being quirkless had been a dark cloud over his life ever since he was told that he didn't have a quirk. And it was often the first question asked when meeting new kids: "What is your quirk?" That question was often asked before asking the other kid's name. But the kids that Izuku was sitting with had no interest in discussing each other's quirks.

The closest they got to discussing quirks was debating All Might's quirk. Izuku believed his quirk was an incredibly strong boost to all of All Might's physical abilities, while another kid thought All Might had two quirks: Super Strength and Invulnerability.

As the two children discussed whether All Might was invulnerable or not, All Might's sidekick, Sir Nighteye, took to the stage. He looked a little nervous, but Izuku knew that Sir Nighteye preferred to stay out of the limelight, supporting All Might's battles quietly from the shadows. Talking to this many people was probably something he was not accustomed to.

"Hello, can everyone hear me?" Sir Nighteye asked into the microphone. He was answered with a cheer. "First of all, both All Might and I would like to thank the people of Tokyo and Japan for their kind welcome. I know that All Might is excited to be back home in Japan after so many years of being in America." Again, this statement was met with a cheer and Sir Nighteye patiently awaited for the sound to die down. "I'm not very good at this." He said shortly, to a small laugh from the audience. "So without further ado, All Might!"

Like a meteor, All Might came shooting down from the roof of the building and landed firmly on the stage in all of his glory. It appeared that he was going to keep the American theme of his costume intact despite moving back to Japan. He looked as mighty and strong as he did on TV. In a world of superheroes, this was a true super human. He straightened and flashed the crowd a dazzling smile, resulting in a roar of noise from the sheer volume of the cheers.

And Izuku was front and center. He didn't scream like the others, but he was still deeply in awe. Standing only a couple of meters away, was the hero that he'd looked up to since childhood. The man who had single-handedly saved a thousand people. The undisputed Number One hero in the world: All Might!

While it seemed that All Might was simply soaking up the praise, his mind was actually on other things. It had taken him almost no time at all to spot Inko Midoriya in the crowd. Despite the fact that he hadn't seen her in years, he still recognized her fairly easily. Green hair was still a rare enough trait that it could be spotted in the crowd, and he was helped by the fact that she'd taken a place just behind where the children sat. They made eye contact, and in that small moment, Inko briefly pointed into the crowd of children before returned to clapping along with the others in the crowd.

She had pointed to a spot right in front of him, at the center of the children, and his eyes swept the children. Right there, front and center, was a young boy with green messy hair, beaming up at him with an All Might T-shirt and clutching a rolled-up poster in his hands. All Might was glad that he'd found that particular spot, so it wouldn't be odd for him to go there first.

 _My son._ Toshinori allowed the thought to only distract him briefly before he forced himself to focus his attention on the crowd as a whole. There would be time to have a very small chat with Izuku later.

There were a few speeches. First All Might said a few words, about his time in America and his pride at returning to protect his home country. He repeated the words of the Hero's Vow, a pledge to save and serve the people, even at the cost of his own life.

The Hero's Vow was slightly old fashioned, being from the time before superheroes were regulated by the government, but the words were still a great comfort for many to hear.

The Prime Minister, the mayor and the chief of police said a few words, along with the leaders of Japan's Hero Association. To Izuku, the speeches seemed to take forever, but finally it was over. All Might, still smiling, stepped down off the stage and down towards where the children were waiting. To Izuku's delight, All Might came straight towards him. He didn't even feel the other children crowding closer to be next to meet with the great hero.

"Hello, young man, what is your name?" All Might asked.

It took a second for Izuku to find his voice. He handed over his poster and a pen for All Might to sign. "I'm Midoriya Izuku." He answered.

 _Definitely my son._ Toshinori realized. He had known the boy's name for a long time. "It's very nice to meet a young fan like you, Izuku." He said.

A couple people gasped in shock, which confused All Might for a moment. And then when he noticed Inko's wide eyes in the crowd, he remembered. _Oh shit. I forgot in Japan calling people by their given name is not normal when just meeting them._

"Oh, how could I have forgotten?" All Might said, shrugging to play it off for the crowd. "You'll have to forgive me, young Midoriya. I've spent a long time in America, and in America it's normal for two people to call each other by their given names, even when they've just met. It slipped my mind. Apologies."

"Um… I'm okay with you calling me Izuku." The boy said, giving a little nervous smile.

Despite his heart longing to write a long, personalized message on the poster, All Might forced himself to write his normal message, along with his autograph before handing the poster and pen back back. His heart almost broke when Izuku gave him another smile, said "Thank you so much, All Might!" and politely got out of the way for the next child.

He forced himself to give the same amount of attention to the other children, except now all of the children were asking for All Might to call them by their given names, which was fine. But he kept glancing at Izuku in moments between signing autographs for the children and chatting with them. The young boy had rushed over to his mother, showing her the signed poster. She smiled at her son's enthusiasm, but her smile fell away when she noticed All Might still glancing at them.

She took her phone out of her purse, held it just so All Might could see, tapped the screen twice and mouthed the word "Tonight."

But he couldn't let her get away just yet. Thankfully, she did not leave, because Izuku apparently didn't want to leave yet. So once the autographs were over, he made his way over to Sir Nighteye. "You saw young Midoriya and his mother?" He asked his sidekick quietly.

"I did." Sir Nighteye replied.

"Give this to the mother as discretely as you can." Toshinori took one of the fliers announcing the event, flipped it over to the back and wrote down his new local number.

"Of course." Sir Nighteye said, taking the paper, folded it into his palm and headed back into the crowd. He stepped out of his element, talking to the children as he slowly made his way over to All Might's son and the boy's mother. Finally, he made his way up to the young boy. "Did you have fun meeting All Might?" Sir Nighteye asked.

Midoriya Izuku nearly toppled over with shock when he saw who was speaking to him. "Sir Nighteye! Um… yes! He's just as cool as he is on TV!"

"He is certainly cool to work with." Sir Nighteye agreed. "Would you like me to sign your poster too?"

"Would you?" Izuku asked, shocked, and immediately handing over his poster and pen.

Sir Nighteye quickly scrawled his autograph and handed the poster and pen back to the boy. While Izuku was staring down at the poster in amazement, Sir Nighteye reached to shake Miss Midoriya's hand. "This is a wonderful boy you've got here."

"Thank you. I'm very proud of him." Inko shook his hand, and he slipped the paper over to her. When he knew she had it, he released her hand, and she discretely dropped the paper into her bag without looking at it. _The woman values discretion. But I suppose that's only to be expected of the woman who has mothered All Might's secret son._ "Thank you for coming today, young Midoriya."

"Thank you, Sir Nighteye!" Izuku gasped.

As it grew later and all of the children had their meet-and-greet with the great hero, the crowd began to disperse. Inko took hold of Izuku's hand once again and began to lead him away from the crowd that was still gathered around All Might. "It's time to go home, Izuku. You still have school in the morning."

"Thanks for letting me come here today, Mom." Izuku said, beaming happily at the poster that not only had All Might's autograph, but Sir Nighteye's as well.

"You're welcome, Izuku. I'm just glad you're happy." She said. But she knew that today's meeting, while leaving Izuku ecstatic, had done little more then wound Toshinori's heart. She could tell just from looking at him that he had longed to drop the ruse, end the event, and spend real time with his son.

Perhaps keeping the secret for too much longer would be painful for the both of them? What if Izuku reached the age of resentment before she had a chance to tell him? What if Toshinori hated her for keeping his son from him? No… he wouldn't. They had both agreed to keep it secret at least until All Might finished whatever business drew him back to Japan. Today's meeting was probably just more painful than he expected.

She would at least call him tonight and apologize. It was the least she could do. She took one last glance backwards at Toshinori surrounded by his fans before she began to lead Izuku back to the bullet train and back home.


	4. Chapter 4

**LES: This chapter contains violence, blood, and gore.**

 **Chapter 4**

* * *

Sir Nighteye was concerned. In the days following his move back to Japan, All Might had shut himself up in his office. He knew the reason, of course. He had seen his son for the first time, but had been unable to interact with the young boy any more than All Might should interact with his fans.

Things had gotten even more gloomy around the All Might Hero Agency after the newspaper article was released. The newspaper took several pictures of the event for the front page, and one of those pictures just happened to be when Toshinori was signing Izuku's poster.

When he was not out on patrol for the purpose of drawing All For One out of hiding, he was locked up in his office, staring at the article and at the beaming face of his child. Sir Nighteye knocked on the door. "All Might?" He asked.

There was a deep sigh on the other side of the door. "Come in." Sir Nighteye took the invitation and stepped into All Might's office. He was sitting alone in the dark. The sidekick had never seen All Might look this intense before. "Do you have anything to report?" He asked.

"I believe that I have made a break through." Sir Nighteye reported, placing his report on All Might's desk. It took a few seconds for the great hero to pick up the papers and look them over. "Last night I found myself with the fortune to be able to use my quirk on one of All For One's inner circle. I have his location for the next three days, but not after that. He moves frequently, and none of his inner circle are given the information as to where until the move is completed."

"Then it is time." All Might said, standing up. "Please reach out to all of my contacts. Gran Torino, Naomasa Tsukauchi… in case we need police support… and perhaps Recovery Girl as well, in case something goes wrong. We can never be too careful with a villain with this power."

"I've also taken the liberty of speaking with a friend of mine." Sir Nighteye told All Might. "He is the editor for one of Japan's major newspapers. He'll keep the story out of the media. No one can know that there exists a villain this powerful out there."

"Wonderful thinking." All Might said. "This is not a battle for fame or recognition. For this fight, I fight solely to protect the people of Japan. No… the world. All For One has to be stopped here and now. Who knows how strong he is with over a century of time to steal quirks. And the longer he is alive, the worse it will be."

"Are you strong enough, sir?" Sir Nighteye asked. "One For All has only been held and improved by eight people. Passing it on just a few more times could yield a holder with almost god-level strength."

"The longer we wait, the more powerful All For One grows as well." All Might reminded him. "And unlike All For One, One For All doesn't stockpile quirks, only power." (*See Footnote) "All For One might not be able to match me in raw strength, but he certainly could have far more versatility than me." The top hero stood up. "Are you ready? Will you support me as I face down All For One?"

Sir Nighteye didn't even hesitate with his answer. "Of course, All Might."

* * *

The battle was horrific.

Sir Nighteye had helped plan many battles for All Might during his career as the Number One Hero's sidekick, but he'd never found himself in a situation like this.

The man was not worried about himself, per say. Despite having a quirk that only gave him an advantage once per day, most of the henchmen that belonged to All For One were hardly more than small-time. And Gran Torino, despite his growing age, was more than a match for All For One's inner circle of henchmen. This was probably due to All For One stealing the best quirks, leaving those working under him who did still have their quirks with near-useless or useless quirks. They were not much of a challenge. (*See Footnote #2)

It was the battle between All Might and his enemy that drew most of Sir Nighteye's attention. All Might had been correct in saying that he was physically the more powerful of the two, but All For One had managed to find some useful quirks that allowed him to actually go on the offensive against the Number One hero.

Sir Nighteye had turned away for a moment when he heard Gran Torino call out a warning and then the most horrible sound that he could imagine: All Might screaming in agony.

Almost completely forgetting his own fight for the moment, Sir Nighteye spun around in the direction of the main battle between All Might and All For One, and what the sidekick saw nearly caused him to vomit in horror.

 _Oh… god… I can see_ through _All Might!_ Sir Nighteye realized, fighting the bile rising in his throat. It seemed that All For One had some sort of tentacle quirk, which he used to catch All Might off-guard and spear him through his side, leaving an enormous and bloody hole in its wake.

"Toshinori!" Gran Torino yelled, and attempted to abandon his battle to rush to his student's aid, and Sir Nighteye was on the verge of joining the old hero when the man he had been fighting punched him in the side of the head hard enough to almost cause him to lose consciousness.

Thankfully, that's when the police stepped in, taking over the fight with the small fry. "Go and help All Might!" All Might's police friend yelled. "We'll handle these guys!"

Without any further hesitation, Sir Nighteye began to run across the battlefield towards his fallen friend. But, perhaps, he had not fallen. He was kneeling down, clutching at his side in a vain attempt to stop his organs from spilling out onto the ground. But it was too late, the ground was all ready littered with the torn remains of his intestines and shredded pieces of his stomach.

Sir Nighteye and Gran Torino's eyes met and they immediately agreed what to do. Sir Nighteye knew he couldn't last more than a few seconds in battle against All For One. He would be more use seeing to All Might. Gran Torino, meanwhile, would buy him all the time he could, even if it cost him his life. Like a rocket, Gran Torino launched at All For One, hoping that his speed and experience alone would be enough to hold off the villain. So Sir Nighteye ran up to All Might, ripped the hero's cape off his costume, and used the fabric as a make-shift bandage, tying it firmly around All Might's waist to stop any more of his organs from spilling out.

But even as he did this, Sir Nighteye wondered if the damage was too much for All Might to fight through. He'd never seen All Might, or any hero, injured this badly continue to fight. He'd never even seen All Might injured with anything more than scratches. And even if he could get back up on his feet, there was now the very real possibility that All Might would die from this battle.

Sir Nighteye reached forward to put his hand on All Might's shoulder, intending to determine his future and if All Might was dying when his hand was stopped by All Might. "No." All Might growled in a firm voice. "Don't use your quirk on me. Defeating All For One is all that matters."

"But All Might..." Sir Nighteye began. Maybe the hero was going into shock and didn't realize how bad his injuries are?

"My life doesn't matter." All Might planted his feet under himself and stood tall once again. He was no longer smiling, his face in a snarl and his teeth grit with agony and determination. "All that matters is stopping him!"

Gran Torino had only managed to buy them a few seconds, but then he too was knocked away with one of All For One's strength-enhanced punches.

"Wait for the right moment." All Might whispered harshly to Sir Nighteye. "Use your quirk on All For One, find a way for us to capture him, or a weakness. I'm… counting on you."

"Ah." All For One said with a sadistic smile when he saw that All Might had gotten back on his feet. "And I was sure that blow would have slowed you down, at least a little. You have more willpower then I initially thought. The coward who ran to hide in America actually has a backbone."

"SHUT UP!" All Might yelled. Even All Might knew that he was running on borrowed time. One For All was giving him the power to fight through the pain, but it couldn't stop him from dying. If this fight was not ended within the next minute or so, he would not be able to continue. He would die, and without having passed on One For All to carry forward into the future.

Thankfully, All For One was gloating and did not realize that All Might was about to make a last, desperate strike. All Might poured every ounce of power that he had into his limbs and leapt forward fast enough to break the sound barrier. It was too fast for All For One to react, and the last thing he ever saw was All Might's grim and determined blood-covered face, leaping at him from the ground soaked in his blood and entrails. And then All For One's entire world exploded into pain and darkness.

All Might's fist made contact with All For One right between his eyes, instantly crushing his skull like it was made of little more than paper mache. His eyes were ruptured and most of All For One's frontal lobe was destroyed in an instant.

Both All Might and All For One fell to the ground. Toshinori screamed in agony once again as he hit the hard ground. It felt like his ribs had now been shattered, and it was nearly impossible to breathe. He started choking and instead of any sort of air, he coughed up mouthful after mouthful of blood. His lung was probably damaged too.

Between coughs of blood, All Might groaned two words "Night… now..."

Sir Nighteye rushed forward. All he needed to do was touch All For One once, and they would know if he was down for the count or how to capture him. Personally, Sir Nighteye believed that All For One was going to die. All Might had almost completely destroyed the man's skull and brain. But he knew All Might wouldn't be content unless they could confirm that All For One was no longer going to be a threat.

But before Sir Nighteye could touch the villain, a dark mist wrapped around the fallen body. It was one of All For One's inner circle. He was pouring out a dark mist. And then the mist vanished, along with the quirk-user and All For One's body.

"Shit!" Sir Nighteye cursed, but he quickly turned his attention back to All Might. Since All For One was gone, and almost certainly dead, he knew he had to use his Foresight on All Might. He had to know if his friend was going to die.

The sidekick knelt at his side and placed his hand on All Might, and immediately got flashes of all of All Might's immediately potential futures. Many of them ended in death, but there were a few futures that ended in All Might surviving. But those futures depended on All Might getting treatment as soon as possible.

"Where is Recovery Girl?" Sir Nighteye yelled, and then turned to the police. "Do any of you have a quirk that will allow you to take him to the hospital without delay?"

"I can teleport, but only a couple of kilometers at a time." One police officer said. "And I certainly can't move him until he's stable."

"Recovery Girl!" Sir Nighteye screamed.

"I'm coming, sonny." Recovery Girl hurried over as fast as she could. "I was looking after Gran Torino… oh dear!" She gasped in horror when she saw the state of All Might. Even through his mortal wound was covered by his cape, it only took a glance for Recovery Girl to know that this was not good. "There is no way I could heal all of this in a single healing." Recovery Girl said. "The stamina drain would kill him for sure, and I can't cause missing organs to grow back."

"Then can you stop the bleeding, at least?" Sir Nighteye asked.

"Even that will probably leave him in a coma for a week or so." Recovery Girl said.

"Do it. We can't get him to the hospital quickly until he's stable."

Recovery Girl leaned down and kissed Toshinori's fevered forehead. Almost immediately he passed out from the drain of stamina, but the bleeding had stopped at least.

"Don't take him to the hospital." Recovery Girl said. "We can't allow the world to find out what has happened to the Symbol of Peace. Take him to one of my friend's private clinics. He is an excellent doctor and very discrete." Recovery Girl gave the address of her friend's clinic to the Police Officer and took out her cellphone to give her friend a call to prepare for All Might's arrival.

"I'll be discrete taking him across town. I'll aim for alleyways and teleport directly into your friend's clinic. Unless something goes wrong, I'll have All Might there in two minutes." The officer said.

Everyone nodded in agreement as the police officer knelt down next to All Might's unconscious body, placed a hand on him, and with a small *pop the two of them were gone.

Sir Nighteye sighed. Right now, he could only hope that All Might would survive. But as for being able to continue on with hero work? He didn't see how All Might would be able to continue being the Symbol of Peace after this injury. This was a career-ending injury, without a doubt.

And there was another problem. Sir Nighteye had been unable to confirm All For One's death. Of course, the sidekick was about ninety-nine percent sure that All For One was dead. He had seen the villain's brain turn into rice pudding from All Might's blow with his own eyes. It would take a healing quirk bordering on immortality to come back from that. In all of history, there is only one immortality quirk, and as far as Sir Nighteye knew, the one who had that quirk still owned it and was living in almost total seclusion.

All For One had to be dead. He just had to be. The world just couldn't be cruel enough to take the greatest good without also removing the greatest evil.

* * *

Sir Nighteye had tried to go straight to the clinic that had taken All Might, but almost as soon as he walked through the door, one of the nurses forced him back out again. "The doctor took him into emergency surgery." The nurse explained as she shoved Sir Nighteye out the door. "He needs to give his complete focus to the patient if he has a chance of survival. I'll call his Agency line once I have news."

"How long will he be in surgery?" Sir Nighteye asked.

"Possibly all night. It's hard to say at the moment." The nurse replied. "Now, please, let us do our jobs."

Sir Nighteye did not sleep a wink that night.

It was the next afternoon when the clinic finally called, and Sir Nighteye rushed back to the clinic. When he arrived, he was ushered into one of the exam rooms normally used for normal doctor visits. When the doctor finally came in, he was removing his blood-strained coat with a heavy sigh.

"Doctor, could you please tell me if he's alive?" Sir Nighteye asked desperately.

"He's alive." The Doctor said. "But I'm afraid that's all I can say until you give me the Hero Agency paperwork that will allow me to discuss All Might's condition with you."

"Of course." Sir Nighteye picked up his briefcase and pulled out the required APPI paperwork. (*See Footnote #3) The doctor took a moment to glance over the paperwork, and once he knew that Sir Nighteye, as All Might's sidekick, had the hero's consent to be privy to his medical condition, he set aside the paperwork.

"Then I suppose I'll be frank." The doctor said. "All Might is alive and is still in a coma from the aftereffects of Recovery Girl using her quirk to stanch the bleeding. The quick application of the make-shift bandage and Recovery Girl saved his life, but he's still in a bad way. He lost a sizable portion of his small and large intestines. His stomach was ripped to shreds beyond repair. I had to perform a total gastrectomy, the complete removal of his stomach."

"Will he be able to survive without a stomach?" Sir Nighteye asked, shocked.

The doctor nodded. "Gastrectomies are not that uncommon of a procedure. In fact, partial gastrectomies are often used for weight loss. He will need to stick to a very strict diet from now on. Little to no fiber. Lots of small meals through the day instead of three large ones. He'll need to pay attention to the nutrition he receives from every single meal. Vitamin supplements might also be a good idea. But that's not the bad part." The doctor took another glance at All Might's chart. "What I'm really worried about is his respiratory system. His lung was punctured in multiple places due to his fractured ribs. I was able to repair that, but the hole that was made in him damaged his diaphragm. As you probably know, the diaphragm is the organ that control's a person's breathing. Right now he's breathing on a respirator, but I can guarantee that he will not be able to breathe at one hundred percent once we take him off the respirator. In fact, it might be possible that his left lung might not be able to function at all anymore. If that is the case, we might have to perform a Extrapleural pneumonectomy, which is the removal of his left lung, part of his diaphragm, and the lining on the left side of his heart. I would prefer to avoid that, however. The procedure is extremely painful and could further compromise his body."

Throughout the doctor's words, Sir Nighteye's hands had been shaking. He knew it was bad, but he had never imagined it would be this bad without resulting in death. "Will he… be able to continue hero work?" Sir Nighteye asked.

The doctor sighed. "I've treated pro heroes before. And if there's one thing I know about the top ranked heroes is that they will not stop until they are literally unable to move their bodies anymore. If it were up to me, I would make him retire. But I have a feeling that I will not be able to stop All Might. This is the man who has build himself up as the Symbol of Peace, and I don't see a man like that willing to stop just from an injury… even an injury this bad. But even with his tenacity, I don't see him performing heroic acts again for at least a couple of months."

"Thank… thank you, doctor." Sir Nighteye said.

The doctor nodded. "I'll call you again when he regains consciousness. I'm sorry."

* * *

 **Footnotes:**

 ***- In the latest manga chapter that I've read (Chapter 212), there are hints that One For All might be able to stockpile quirks as well. But this information has _just_ been introduced and has not been properly explained yet. It could just be another way that Izuku is making One For All his own, but the last couple chapters seem to hint that Izuku's new power is a quirk that belonged to a previous holder.**

 ***#2- In the show, Gran Torino mentions that All For One has a completely different skill set when they last fought, so other than strength enhancers, I tried to avoid showing him as having any of the quirks that he had in this final fight with All Might. This includes his ability to activate other's quirks. He does not have that ability yet, so if he sees a useful quirk, he takes it for himself without hesitation, severely crippling his organization. He got smarter the second time around. Only once he got the quirk that allowed him to forcibly activate other's quirks did he start to let useful quirks pass him by.**

 ***#3: APPI is the Japanese equivalent to American HIPAA laws. In case you don't work in the medical field, HIPAA stands for "Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act". It sounds complicated, but it's basically patient-doctor confidentiality rules. Basically, a doctor is not allowed to discuss a patient's medical history or any medical issues they may be having unless the person is the patient or someone that the patient has given permission to speak for them or to be aware of the patient's medical condition. I would think that all heroes working in the same Agency would sign paperwork so they could be each other's medical advisers in case the worst should happen, especially in the case of All Might since he has no known family.**


	5. Chapter 5

**LES: I've looked up so much medical stuff for this story in the last few days that Google probably thinks I'm dying. I've noticed that my ads are starting to turn into medical stuff.**

 **Ironically enough, All Might's most visible symptom was actually the hardest to pin down. Obviously the coughing up blood is from his "destroyed respiratory system" but I've had to study a lot of ways that the lungs could be hurt or destroyed, starting from the most invasive sort of procedure and working backwards. In the end, I decided it would be best if instead of removing all of Toshinori's left lung, I would have it be only a partial removal. That doesn't seem to lead to the symptom of coughing up blood, but I could always chalk that up to the original trauma, since that could have caused it. Besides, the most invasive procedure is usually only performed for aggressive lung cancer as a last resort. The total removal of one lung along with the lining has a 7% chance of causing death, compared to the much more reasonable 3% of a partial removal. And I can't see a doctor being willing to risk that on a non-cancerous, traumatic injury that has weakened All Might's body.**

* * *

 **Chapter 5**

It took a week before All Might awoke, and in that time, Sir Nighteye had to make up every excuse he could to excuse the Number 1 hero's absence. Unfortunately, that was all he could do. There was no way he could take All Might's place in the community. He'd never possessed the natural charisma that All Might did. And then, finally, he received the call.

He rushed back to the clinic and was let in by the staff. For the first time since the battle, Sir Nighteye finally got to see his partner and friend.

Awake or not, All Might looked terrible, with several IVs stuck in his arms, hooked up to numerous medical devices, and an oxygen mask over his face. All Might's eyes found him as he entered the room. "Night..." He whispered in a voice that was harsh from disuse.

"All Might… I'm so sorry." Sir Nighteye whispered, fighting back tears. If only he could have helped more. If only he had a quirk that could be of more use to his friend and partner. If only…

"It's… okay..." All Might whispered.

"Please no more speaking." The doctor said. "Still, the fact that you are able to speak at all is a good sign. Perhaps your left lung is able to function a little. If that is the case, we can rule out the need to totally remove your left lung. That's such a relief. Not only would we have to contact a specialist to even attempt the operation, it's a risk that I don't want to take with the life of the Symbol of Peace." The doctor put on his stethoscope and listened to All Might's left lung. After a minute or so, he pulled the stethoscope out of his ears. "Your breathing is still weak. So we might have to remove part of your lung, and perhaps make further repairs to your diaphragm. But we need to wait for you to recover a little bit more before we attempt any more surgery." The doctor turned back to Sir Nighteye. "Would you mind giving me some assistance, Nighteye?" He asked.

"Of course. What do you need?" Sir Nighteye asked, taking a step forward.

"I want to check the progress of the skin graft on his side." The doctor said. "The bandages need changed anyway. Help support him while I cut off the bandages."

Sir Nighteye was instantly at All Might's side, providing gentle, but firm support to help him into a seated position. He tried desperately to ignore the groans of pain coming from All Might. The doctor cut off the bandages and Sir Nighteye gasped in shock.

It didn't look good at all, like an open, festering bloody wound covered in a thin, latticed white material.

"I know it looks awful." The doctor said, "But this seems to actually be taking quite well. It will probably leave a lasting scar, but at least the wound will close up." The doctor quickly applied new bandages to All Might, and Sir Nighteye allowed him to fall back down on the bed.

"So he'll survive?" Sir Nighteye asked.

"If the rest of the surgeries go well, I don't see why not." The doctor said, taking off his gloves. "But All Might will never be the same, I can assure you both." He turned to look directly at All Might, who was watching him silently. "I haven't been made privy to what your quirk is, but it is obviously not invulnerability. Your body has been damaged beyond repair by whatever fight caused this. To be honest… I'm terrified that there was someone out there who could do this..." He trailed off. "So I suppose that's why I can see from the look in your eyes that you are going to ignore my advice and continue being a hero. Just know that this _will_ lead you to an early grave. Please, All Might… retire. Enjoy the rest of your life and focus on taking care of yourself instead of others. You certainly deserve that after everything you've done for society at large." The doctor stepped out of the room.

Sir Nighteye waited a few moments before he grabbed the nearest chair and pulled it closer to All Might's bed. Sir Nighteye fixed his partner with a level stare. "The doctor is right, you know. No one would blame you for retiring after an injury like this." He had switched to English to prevent eavesdropping. Most Japanese students learned English, but were also not as fluent in the language as Sir Nighteye and All Might were.

All Might tapped his fingers on the mattress. Sir Nighteye stared at him for a moment before pulling out a legal pad and a pen, handing it over. All Might wrote slowly, clumsily, but it was still legible English. "Can't stop now."

"You always were too stubborn. Too stubborn for your own good." Sir Nighteye sighed. "The most intelligent thing to do right now is to look for a successor to hold One For All. I'm sure that if we sent word to U.A., the staff would be more than happy to send us their recommendations.

All Might started writing again. But it was only two letters. "No."

"No? What do you mean, no?" Sir Nighteye asked, confused.

All Might underlined his previous message. "Can't stop now."

"But, sir, that's madness." Sir Nighteye said, shocked. He reached forward to touch All Might, ignoring the hero's gasp of shock. Within an instant, the future flooded into Sir Nighteye's mind, with far less variables in the future than he was used to. There was two things he could be sure of at that moment.

All Might would never fully recover from these injuries. And…

"These injuries have made your future crystal clear." Sir Nighteye said, tears starting to run down his face. "The time will come when your body will fail you. You will not be able to protect yourself. Six… maybe seven years… after that, you will die."

That, at least, seemed to give All Might a bit of pause. And then, finally, he wrote: "No one can stop death, not even me." He turned his gaze back to the window, staring up at the sky for a few moments, and then he started writing again. "I'll start searching, but on my own terms."

"Where will you start if not U.A.?" Sir Nighteye asked. "I'm almost certain that we can find someone in the hero course with a strong quirk and the right personality to take over as your successor… maybe to even become the new Symbol of Peace." All Might did not respond, and a sick feeling started in Sir Nighteye's stomach. "Nepotism." He realized. "You're going to give that boy… your illegitimate son the first choice, aren't you?" His mind flew back to their single meeting with the boy. The kid had seemed nice enough, but he was just a normal boy meeting with his heroes that day. They knew nothing about his personality or his own plans for the future. "You hardly know him at all. And you don't know if he has ambitions to be a hero. As a quirkless child, he knows he can't make it, so his sights are set lower. He will not have the training or the determination needed for this."

Finally, All Might replied in writing. "I will not force this quirk on anyone."

"But first you are going to offer it to a child that you hardly know just because you are related by blood?!" Sir Nighteye stood up, his voice getting louder and more hysterical. "All Might, I _cannot_ condone this!"

"If you are going to raise your voice like that, please leave." One of the nurses said, sticking her head in the door. "Please, this patient needs to rest, not to be yelled at or lectured."

Sir Nighteye stood frozen, his hands clenched into fists and angry tears running down his face. How could All Might be _so fucking foolish_?! "I suppose..." Sir Nighteye began, forcing his emotions back under control. "We'll speak about this again once you get released. Please… focus on healing… All Might." Sir Nighteye said, turning around and storming out the door.

All Might closed his eyes, tears starting to gather in the corner of his eyes as well. _I know it's stupid._ Toshinori thought to himself. But he couldn't stop thinking about the way that young Izuku had looked up at him when they met. The broad smile that was so like his own. The excited gleam in his eyes. The way he had practically vibrated with excitement when he went to show his mother his signed poster.

 _Quirkless or not, that boy admires heroes._ Toshinori thought to himself. _I can tell because I used to be just like him… a quirkless boy following after heroes with such a fanboyish excitement. All it took was one person to believe in me for me to reach where I am today. And, perhaps, if my son desires it… he will reach the same heights._

His thoughts were cut off when he started coughing, and the nurse rushed over, briefly removing the oxygen mask so that it was not filled with the blood he was coughing up. As soon as the coughing fit passed, the mask was replace. "Oh, dear, that must've been too much for you." The nurse said. "It's not good for you to be coughing while your lungs are still recovering." She adjusted some of the machines, and Toshinori realized that he was being sedated. Within fifteen seconds, he had fallen into a dreamless sleep.

"Sleep and recover, All Might. We'll take care of you." The nurse said.

* * *

 **LES: I felt bad writing the beginnings of the rift between All Might and Sir Nighteye… (cries)**


	6. Chapter 6

**LES: In this chapter, Inko sends Izuku over to Bakugou's house while she travels to Tokyo. I just want to make a few things clear. Inko is friends with Bakugou's parents. She doesn't know that Bakugou bullies her child. And Izuku, despite not wanting to be there, is largely safe in Bakugou's house. Bakugou's mom doesn't put up with Katsuki's shit and would not tolerate him bullying Izuku in her house.**

 **Chapter 6**

* * *

Another month past, and by this time the entire world was losing its mind wondering where All Might was. The worry and fear had traveled all the way up to the United Nations in New York, whose meetings had devolved into little more than the American delegation screaming at their Japanese counterparts for losing track of the world's Top Hero _days_ after leaving America. The Japanese ambassador had stayed polite, at first, but as the venom spewed at him got worse and worse, they eventually started yelling back about how All Might was on a covet mission, and he could certainly take care of himself.

Of course, the ambassador actually had no idea, personally, where All Might was. All he had was the assurances from the Japanese Hero Association that, according to All Might's sidekick, Sir Nighteye, the top hero was fine.

All Might was still in the private clinic.

He'd had two more surgeries in the last month. The first was to remove and replace the diaphragm with a synthetic replacement. The left side of his diaphragm had been mangled and could hardly function at all anymore. But, even after that, his left lung still only had a small amount of functionality. So All Might went into surgery again, this time his lower ribs and the lower lobe of his left lung was removed.

The loss of his stomach really started to take its toll on his body during this time. Having lived in America for years, he was far more used to the American habit of three very large meals a day. Without his stomach, his appetite dropped to almost nothing, and he despaired at the amount of food he could stomach in a single sitting. It caused his appetite to disappear totally. Pretty much the only nutrition that he was getting was through an IV.

It was devastating to his body, and that trapped All Might into a feedback loop of feeling bad for himself, losing his appetite from depression, and causing his body to waste away even faster.

All Might stared at himself in the mirror, and he hated himself. He was losing weight and muscle mass fast. If he allowed the power of One For All to flow through his body, his body could reattain his former strength and power. But that caused new problems. It was painful to hold the form, aggravating his wounds. All Might could not be sure yet, but he knew that this was not a permanent fix.

The nurse entered the room and sighed in exasperation. "All Might, sir, please stop pushing yourself like this. Allowing your body to recover properly will help you a lot more in the long run."

One For All burned away from his body, and he returned to his wasting form. To tell the truth, the nurse understood how he was feeling. She had seen it many, many times before, especially with those who took pride in their physicality. It was pretty common for patients to start seeing themselves in only the negative. To the nurse, he was still All Might, the world's greatest hero. When he looked at himself in the mirror, he could only see the sunken in eyes and cheeks, the loss of his muscles, and the horrific scar on his side.

"Have you been having trouble breathing?" The nurse asked, inspecting his surgical scars.

All Might did not answer for a few seconds. "I'm still coughing up blood."

The nurse nodded. "You had a very traumatic injury. You might have that problem for years… and it will be worse if you try to push yourself." She took a moment to listen to his left lung, and then put her stethoscope back around her neck. She stepped back out into the hallway and brought in a food tray.

All Might frowned at the food and turned away. "Please, at least try a little." The nurse said, sitting down in the chair next to the bed. "Your body still needs food, even if you have trouble feeling hungry."

All Might frowned again at the bland food, but then relented. At least a little. He ate a few bites before he pushed the rest of the food away. The nurse sighed. At least it was an improvement.

"Do you need anything?" The nurse asked.

"My cellphone." All Might answered.

"Of course." The nurse walked over to the table and picked up All Might's cellphone and handed it to the man. As he reached for it, the nurse put her hand on his. He looked up at her, a little shocked. "I know that you're feeling discouraged." The nurse said. "But you are recovering pretty well for how badly you were injured when you first arrived. Everyone thought you were going to die, but here you are, proving just how strong you are. Don't give up on yourself, because we're not going to give up on you." And then she let go of his hand and stepped back out into the hallway.

For a few moments, All Might was frozen. But then he walked back over to the hospital bed and sat down. He unlocked his phone and navigated to his contacts and found Midoriya Inko's number.

He hesitated for a couple more minutes, before he pressed the call button.

It took a couple of rings, but then Inko answered. "Oh, thank goodness! Toshinori, are you okay? No one knows where you've been! Izuku has been so worried about All Might being missing that he's made himself sick with worry."

Toshinori's felt his heart skip a beat over the fact that he had caused them such worry. "Inko..."

Maybe Inko could hear how tired he was. "Toshinori… are you all right?" She asked.

"Could you… come visit me in Tokyo?" He asked.

There was a short pause. "I… of course. Do you want me to bring Izuku?"

"Not yet. I want to talk to you first." Toshinori told her.

"Yes. I'll come to Tokyo. Do you want me to come to your agency?"

Toshinori couldn't bare to tell her that she had to come to a medical clinic. "No. Send me your train information, and I'll have someone pick you up at the station."

"Okay. I'll send Izuku to go to a friend of mine and come as soon as I can."

"Thank you, Inko." Toshinori said.

* * *

After giving her goodbye, Inko hung up. She knew something was wrong. She could just tell. She looked over at Izuku, who was busy watching hero videos on the computer. She sighed. "Izuku, could you please go to Katsuki's house?"

Izuku stopped the video. For a second, he didn't answer. Before Inko could ask again, Izuku turned and looked at her. "Okay." He said. "Are you going somewhere?"

"Yes. I have to go to Tokyo." Inko said, gathering up her purse.

"Aw, Mom, can't I go?" Izuku asked.

"Not this time, dear." Inko said. "Perhaps next time."

"Oh… okay." Izuku said, as he began to walk over to the door.

"I'm very hopeful that I'll be home tonight, but if I can't, you can stay with your aunt and uncle." Inko told Izuku.

"Be safe, mom." Izuku told her as he put on his shoes.

"I will." Inko said, putting on her own shoes and letting them both outside. She walked Izuku to Katsuki's house and, after explaining things to her friends, she left Izuku in their care.

She walked to the train station and bought a seat on the next train to Tokyo. Once she had the train information, she texted that information to Toshinori and began her journey.

Once she got to the station, she immediately recognized Sir Nighteye. She didn't know about him as well as her son, but even she could tell that something was wrong. Besides a polite greeting, he had not said a word to her until they got into the car.

At that point, Inko could not stay silent any longer. "Could you please tell me what's going on?" She asked.

Sir Nighteye sighed. "Well, you are about to find out for yourself, so I suppose there's no harm in giving you advanced warning. Toshinori returned to Japan in order to fight against a super-villain. The villain was defeated, but All Might… he was critically injured in the fight. He's been in a private clinic for over a month now."

The words struck Inko dumb. Toshinori… All Might was the strongest superhero in the world. What sort of super-villain could hurt the Number One hero that badly?

"Just a fair warning, he doesn't look the same anymore. His injuries have caused him to lose over 22 kilograms so far." Sir Nighteye said.

 _He was hurt that badly?_ Inko thought, shocked. A little over half an hour later, Sir Nighteye pulled up to the back entrance of some fancy private clinic.

"Hardly anyone knows he's here, so we have to go through the back to see him." Sir Nighteye told her, helping her out of the car and leading her through the doorway. The nurses and doctors had more important things to do, but they still cast a curious glance at the woman whom Nighteye was bringing to see All Might.

Sir Nighteye stopped and gestured towards the door to Toshinori's room. "You're not going in?" She asked.

Sir Nighteye's jaw tightened. "Not right now." He said shortly.

Inko nodded wordlessly, nervously opened the door and stepped inside. She couldn't help but let out a little gasp of shock when she saw Toshinori. What Sir Nighteye had said… the Symbol of Peace was wasting away. He was laying on the hospital bed, staring glumly at the food that was set before him. Inko was shocked at the food. Wasn't this supposed to be a fancy private clinic? And they couldn't afford to give the Number One hero food that was not that bland… or at least in a larger portion? Even Izuku, with as small as his body was, would be asking for seconds after such a tiny meal. No wonder he had lost so much weight.

"Toshinori." She said to get his attention.

He looked around. "Inko, it's good to..."

"What the hell are they doing to you in here?" She asked, moving up to his bedside. "Surely they could spare you more food than this? If this is what they are feeding you, then it's no wonder..."

"Inko." Toshinori said, a little more firmly now, and she quieted down. "I had to have my stomach removed. This is about all I can eat now without vomiting."

"Oh god, are you…?" She trailed off. _Of course he's not all right._ She thought to herself. _Just look at him._ "Why did you call me now? Is this about wanting to meet Izuku? Wouldn't you want to wait until you are out of the hospital?"

"They are probably going to let me go in two weeks." Toshinori said. "Right now they are mostly worried about me because I have no appetite. I suppose they are waiting for someone to volunteer to take care of me, or for me to say that I'll retire."

"Is that what this is about?" Inko asked. "Are you going to retire?"

"Not yet." Toshinori said. "Inko, I do want to speak to you about Izuku. Besides being a fan of mine and not having a quirk, how does he feel about heroes?"

Inko smiled fondly. "He loves heroes. When he was a small child, before we found out about him being quirkless, the only thing he would talk about was how he'd become a great hero like you once he got his quirk. And that hasn't really changed. He told me that he wants to be the first quirkless child to attend the UA hero course! Can you imagine?"

"That's a lofty goal. What's he doing to make that dream a reality?" Toshinori asked.

Inko sighed. "He runs all over the city, hunting down as many hero fights as he can find. He has these notebooks that he started writing in when he was just five years old. They are hero analysis books. They are pretty amazing. He can watch a hero fight just a few times and pick apart the strengths and weaknesses of the individual hero and villain. He also says that the running helps him build up stamina."

Toshinori nodded thoughtfully. Building up stamina was a good start, but if he wanted to pass One For All to Izuku he would have to build up his strength too. Thankfully the child was still young enough for this to be corrected with a proper training regimen. But what really impressed Toshinori was the idea of Izuku analyzing hero fights. Despite being a hero who largely solved fights by punching the other guys really hard, he was not one to look down upon the application of intelligence in battle. Taking a child that analytical and cultivating their instincts in a fight to complement their intelligence could make Izuku an incredible hero.

"He still does this? He still wants to be a hero?" Toshinori asked.

"Well, if there are villains out there capable of doing something like _this_ to the top hero, I'm not sure if I'd want Izuku anywhere near villain fights anymore." Inko said honestly.

"This? Not every villain is like this." Toshinori told her. "The man who did this was… one of a kind. But I don't want to talk about the fight that did this to me. It's over and he's gone. What I want to talk about right now is Izuku's future as a young hero."

"Does he have a future in any hero course without a quirk?" Inko asked.

"Inko… I've never spoken to you about this, but let me tell you about my quirk and what I can do with it." He said in a hushed voice.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Inko was in shock. "Let me see if I understand you. You possess a quirk that, by its very nature, is one that is passed on from person to person, growing stronger every time it is passed along? And you want to transfer this quirk to my son?"

"Our son." Toshinori gently reminded her.

"How? How is this possible?" Inko asked.

"I can assure you, it is. Hardly anyone knows, but I was not born with a quirk. It's my fault that Izuku was born without a quirk. This stockpiling quirk was passed onto me from my mentor, and now I want to pass it on to our son, if he is willing to accept the power."

"A quirk that can be passed onto others?" Inko gasped. "But then wouldn't that make him a target for people who would want your power?" She asked.

"It might, if they only know the basics and have no understanding of how the quirk actually works. It is passed on via DNA, and Izuku all ready has my DNA. But he did not get my quirk because the holder has to mean for it to be passed on. This quirk cannot be taken by force or transferred by accident."

"What do you mean it is passed on with DNA?" Inko asked.

"Well… when my mentor passed it to me, I had to swallow a strand of her hair." Toshinori admitted. He had been totally grossed out when Nana handed him a strand of her hair with the instruction to eat it. But One For All was worth a few seconds of disgust and a couple minutes of nausea. "But before all of that, I'll want to train his so he'll be stronger. He'll need a strong body to handle my quirk, and that should take no more than a couple of years. If everything goes right, he'll could have my quirk and have it completely under control by the time of the U.A. entrance exam."

"Train him how?" Inko asked. "I can't afford to..." She trailed off, embarrassed to admit that she couldn't afford to send Izuku to Tokyo by train and back every single day for the next couple of years.

"Inko, he's my son. Do you really think I would not financially support him, or you?" Toshinori asked. "I may have been out of commission for over a month, but I'm nowhere near financial ruin. In fact, I could buy you and Izuku a house in Tokyo."

"Goodness, Toshinori, this is all so sudden." Inko gasped. "Are you sure you want to do all this?"

"Of course." Toshinori said. "If Izuku wants it that way. I'll do nothing without your permission, or his."

Inko sighed. "You… you have my permission. I'll bring Izuku with me next time so we can air all of this out with him. And we can decide everything else later." She stood up. "I'll see you later, Toshinori." And she walked out.

Toshinori sighed. _All in all, that had not gone as bad as it could have gone._


	7. Chapter 7

**LES: In this chapter I tried to reconcile the fact that everyone knew that All Might had gone to U.A. High without anyone knowing All Might's real identity as Yagi Toshinori. So I basically pulled an explanation out of my butt that Toshinori didn't choose All Might as a hero name when he was at U.A. But I do have a tiny bit of evidence. I think that All Might was specifically his American hero name that he kept permanently, mainly because in the original Japanese version of the anime, all the characters call him the Engrish words "All Might", not a Japanese equivalent. If someone called him by whatever hero name he picked in U.A. (maybe he was one of those students who just used his own name…?), everyone would be like "Oh, Yagi Toshinori… I remember him." But no one can equate All Might to one specific U.A. student because of the hero name change. I don't know. It still seems even worse then Clark Kenting it to me, but that's all I can think of.**

 **To Readers On This Site: You guys are so amazing with the crazy amount of reviews I got for Chapter 6 even though I uploaded it at midnight, that I've decided to reward you with Chapter 7 a day early. Of course, we are rapidly approaching the point where I have the chapters completed. Chapter 8 is completed and I'm currently working on Chapter 9. So after tomorrow expect longer delays between chapters.**

 **Chapter 7**

* * *

Izuku greeted Inko happily when she came to pick him up from the Bakugou household. "Thanks for looking after him." Inko bowed to her friends.

"It was no problem at all." They replied, waving her off with a smile. "Perhaps we can have dinner together sometime?"

"Of course." Inko answered, taking Izuku's hand and waving to her friends as they began the walk home.

"Mom?" Izuku asked.

"Yes?"

"Why did you have to go to Tokyo so suddenly?" He asked.

"I… I'll tell you when we get home." Inko sighed.

They were silent the rest of the way home. Once Inko locked the door behind her, she turned to her son. "Please sit down on the couch, Izuku." Her son gazed up at her, concern radiating from his eyes. But he followed her instruction.

Inko sat down next to him, wondering where to start. She had thought about it all the way home, but still wasn't quite sure where to start. "I… I don't know where to begin." She said nervously.

"Is everything all right, Mom?"

Inko let out another sigh. "Your… your father is back in Japan. He's in Tokyo, in fact. I went to go and see him."

"My… my dad?" Izuku asked. "But… Mom, why couldn't I go? Does he not want to see me? To get to know me? Don't I have the right to meet my dad?"

"It's… oh, it's complicated." Inko said, tears starting to form in her eyes, and Izuku instantly quieted down. "I'm sorry. Izuku. I'm so sorry."

Izuku stared at her. He remembered the words she had cried when they found out he wasn't going to have a quirk. She seemed just as distraught now as she did then.

"Izuku..." Inko took a deep breath, wiping away her tears. "You know that your father and I are not married. We didn't mean to have a child together, but that's how things ended up. And he was always so busy, only spending days at a time in Japan. I never knew why, but he could not stay in Japan. And, even if he did, there was an element of danger involved."

"Danger? I don't understand." Izuku said, confused.

"Izuku, this is very hard for me to explain. Your father… oh god..." She trailed off. "Your father… he is a very famous and very important person. If people… if villains found out that your father had a child, if could put us in very grave danger. And, when your father in America for a vast majority of time, he couldn't protect us from those dangers."

"But… how? How could my father be that important?" Izuku asked.

"Your father..." Inko asked. And then she leaned over to the table that contained most of Toshinori's correspondence. She took out the last envelope and handed it to Izuku. Izuku took it, confused. He hadn't seen one of these envelopes in years. But it was all different this time. Back when he first saw one of these envelopes, he couldn't read or understand a single word of English. He still couldn't read or understand English on the whole, but he could recognize a few words due to just seeing them a lot. Such as, for instance, learning about All Might's hero agency in America.

He couldn't understand English, but he certainly could recognize the words that made up the name of All Might's hero agency, and those were the same exact words that were staring at him from the corner of the envelope. He turned his attention to the delivery address, the part that was handwritten and he was all ready starting to suspect.

Izuku stood up and rushed towards his room. Inko followed him, knowing exactly what he was running to his room for. He had a handwriting sample that came from his father to compare to other samples of handwriting. And he had only just recently gotten a sample of handwriting from a certain top hero.

The poster that All Might had signed was hanging up in his room, and Izuku ran straight towards it, glancing between the two handwriting samples, looking for similar shapes. Of course, Izuku couldn't be one hundred percent sure, but he could see the signs that the two samples were similar, and could possibly be written by the same person. Izuku stared back at his mother, begging for an answer.

"Mom… is this real?" He asked, shocked.

"Oh, Izuku… I'm so sorry for not telling you sooner." Inko started to cry again.

"I… I can't… I can't believe it. How is this possible?" Izuku gasped, shocked. "This… this just doesn't happen in real life! How could I be the son of… of… Oh my god!"

"I suppose you have more questions..." Inko began nervously.

But Izuku was no longer listening to her. He had his hands pressed to his mouth and was muttering. And Inko knew her son well enough to know that there was almost no stopping him when he got like this. So she waited patiently for about five minutes while he muttered to himself. Finally, when he stopped, he glanced at his mother.

"When we went to see All Might, did he know…?" Izuku asked.

Inko sighed. "Yes. He knew about you. He knew it was you. He has known your name for a very long time and when Tosh… All Might saw me in the crowd I pointed you out to him."

"Why didn't he…?" Izuku began, then paused. "Is that why he called me by my given name on accident?"

"No, I think he was telling the truth about following the American custom." Inko said. "He and I spoke briefly when you asked to go to Tokyo to see him and we both agreed that you shouldn't know yet. And, Izuku, I know you probably couldn't see it because you were not looking for it; but I saw it. His heart was breaking that he couldn't say anything more to you."

"But… he's been back in Japan for over a month now, and he..." Izuku trailed off. "Wait. Wait. You've _seen_ All Might?! Where is he?" He asked.

"That's the reason that he hasn't been able to contact you yet." Inko said. "I don't really understand the whole story. He's only told me a little about what happened when he came back to Japan. From what I understand, he spent all this time in America because of some super-villain in Japan, and came back a month ago to confront that villain. Now, Izuku, he doesn't want anyone to know about this, so you can't tell anyone. But that villain fight injured him. Badly. I visited him in the hospital today."

"All Might is in the hospital?!" Izuku gasped. "He was hurt that badly that he's still in the hospital after all this time?"

"He… he was hurt very badly." Inko told him. "He wants to meet you, but I believe he wants to wait until after he's out of the hospital."

"When?" Izuku asked.

"A week or two." Inko answered. "But it's more than this..." Inko paused. _How could she even begin to explain Toshinori's quirk?_ She eventually decided that Toshinori had to be the one to explain his quirk. "I told him about how you want to get into the hero course of UA, and he wants to help you accomplish that."

That got Izuku's attention. "What… All Might…"

"He wants us to move to Tokyo, so that he can train you." Inko said. "There's much more to this, but I think it would be better if Toshinori explained it to you."

"Toshinori?" Izuku asked, confused.

"Oh! That's his name. His given name. His full name is Yagi Toshinori." Inko asked. "Do you have any more questions?" She asked.

"Only about a million..." Izuku said with a grim smile.

* * *

Over the next week, Izuku seemed to exist in a zombie-like state. Thankfully, it went unnoticed by his classmates and teachers. They were all pretty used to Izuku acting oddly.

One night had turned his world completely upside down. All Might… the world's top hero and his idol since forever, was actually his father. And that father wanted them to move to Tokyo so that he could train Izuku to give him a better chance of entering the U.A. hero course.

Naturally, it would still be very hard without a quirk, but being trained by All Might himself? That had to up his odds if nothing else. Right now, Izuku was doing what he could. But under the instruction of someone who knew what it took to be a hero, he could become so much better.

Moving to Tokyo would mean a new school, but Izuku didn't mind. He is quirkless here, and he will be quirkless in his new school, so he didn't expect to make any friends at all. There would probably even be a new Kacchan to bully him. No, All Might was the only reason to move to Tokyo… but a compelling one.

So the week passed and finally Midoriya Inko got the call from All Might. He was out of the hospital and ready for her to bring Izuku to meet him. She told him that Izuku knew about him being his father, but not about his quirk and inheriting it. She had decided to leave that to him. He agreed that it would probably be best.

Izuku fidgeted the entire train ride to Tokyo, but still didn't say a word.

They were picked up at the station once again by Sir Nighteye and Izuku, so unlike himself, didn't even say a word to the hero. "I suppose you've told him?" Nighteye asked.

"Yes." Inko replied. "He's still a little in shock."

"I suppose it's to be a little expected." Sir Nighteye said. He turned a critical eye on the young boy. Sir Nighteye and All Might had another shouting match with one another before Nighteye left to pick up the Midoriyas at the train station. Sir Nighteye was still standing firm that All Might was choosing to offer his power to the boy for selfish reasons, while All Might insisted that he saw the same seeds of potential that his master once saw in him.

Neither one seemed to be willing to budge in this situation and a rift was steadily growing between hero and sidekick. In fact, Sir Nighteye was all ready starting to look into the possibility of forming his own agency. Making the leap from All Might's sidekick to independent hero would be an easy task, since being All Might's sidekick was all the credibility he would need to form his own agency and start taking on his own sidekicks. It was hurting Sir Nighteye to consider leaving, but he and All Might just couldn't see eye to eye on this incredibly important issue.

He would step out from under All Might's shadow and begin taking on his own sidekicks and interns. And he would always be on the look out for young heroes with the training and heart to properly take All Might's place as the true Symbol of Peace.

Izuku was kind of shocked when they got to the house. It was certainly a lot larger then the apartment that he shared with his mother, but it was not that much larger than many of the other houses in Tokyo. It was pretty average on all accounts, and nothing about it suggested that it was the home of the world's top hero.

Inko helped Izuku out of the car, and Sir Nighteye gave them a brief nod before he drove away. "Now, remember, dear..." Inko began as she led Izuku up to the front door. "All Might has been hurt incredibly bad and spent almost a month and a half in the hospital because of it. He hasn't been able to eat properly since and has lost a lot of weight. He will not look the same as you are used to seeing him."

"Okay." Izuku said. He was starting to shake with nerves and his mother could feel that from where she was holding his hand.

"Everything is going to be fine." Inko told her son. "He wants to meet you. He's wanted to get to know you for a long time."

"But… this is the top hero, All Might!"

"And he is also Yagi Toshinori, your father." Inko reminded him. "Everything will be fine." She repeated. She led Izuku up to the doorway and knocked. A voice from inside told them to come in, and she opened the door, leading the young boy inside.

All Might… his father, was sitting on a chair, waiting for them in the family room. His mother had warned him that All Might looked different following his injury, but it was still a horrible shock. Instead of his famous fearless smile, his smile seemed to be much more forced and seemed more like a soundless snarl. His eyes and cheeks were hollow and sunken in, and his muscles seemed to have wasted away. It didn't help that he was wearing clothes that seemed to be five sizes too big.

 _What do I call him?_ Izuku wondered to himself. _All Might? Yagi-san? Dad?_

He couldn't decide what to say, so he just wordlessly bowed.

Toshinori looked at his son's bowed form a little sadly, but he understood. This whole situation was pretty awkward. Even he felt it. To the young boy, going super polite was about the only option he had. "My boy, come closer."

Izuku looked up at him nervously, and then stepped closer.

Toshinori stood up and met Izuku halfway across the room. Izuku noticed that he seemed to have his hand pressed to his side. He wondered what had happened to him, but then he forced his eyes away from All Might's side. But the tall man's eyes were pretty scary too without the familiar All Might smile.

It broke Toshinori's heart to see the fear in Izuku's eyes. He had seen fear in a lot of children's eyes over the years, but he was also used to that fear disappearing at the sight of him. "I know that I look kind of scary like this." He said, kneeling down so that he was closer to Izuku's size. "Is this better?" Toshinori activated his quirk and took on his former appearance. But it didn't last too long, because he started coughing. Toshinori held his hand up to his mouth to stop any blood he might be coughing up. Thankfully, it was not a lot, but it did force him out of his muscled form.

That was not what he intended by bringing out his old form, but in a strange way it did break the ice. Izuku completely forgot about his own fear and rushed forward, placing his hands firmly on Toshinori's shoulders. "All Might! Are you all right?" When the boy saw the small splattering of blood on Toshinori's hand, he turned to his mother. "Mom, do you have a tissue or a handkerchief?"

"I'm fine, young Izuku." Toshinori said, wiping away the blood with his own tissue. "This is just the way that my body is going to behave from now on, and I'm going to have to live with that." He smiled at his son, and Izuku saw the shadow of his former self in that happy expression. "You saw someone in trouble and instantly forgot that you were afraid of me and rushed forward to help me." He reached out and carded his hand through Izuku's curly hair, and looked up at Inko with a wide smile. "You certainly were not lying to me when you said he longs to be a hero. You, my boy, have the heart of a hero."

To Toshinori's shock, Izuku suddenly burst into tears, and he looked over to Inko, a little alarmed. But she didn't seem to be alarmed. In fact, she was smiling happily. "Are you all right, young Izuku?" Toshinori asked.

"Yeah." Izuku sniffed, wiping away his tears. "I've waited all my life for someone to say that I have the potential to be a hero."

"Is that because you don't have a quirk?" Toshinori asked.

Izuku flinched. "Are you… disappointed in me?"

"Disappointed for what? For not having a quirk?" Toshinori asked.

Izuku kept staring down at his feet. "Well… no one really knows what your quirk is, but it's really amazing. Are you mad that I… that I didn't have your quirk?"

"Not at all." Toshinori said. "It's not your fault that you didn't receive my quirk through birth. My quirk doesn't work like that. It cannot be passed on without intention." Izuku stared at him in confusion. Toshinori smiled at him. "I know that doesn't make much sense. Come sit down with me on the couch. Sitting on the ground like this is making me sore." Inko and Izuku helped Toshinori stand up and they walked him over to the couch. Toshinori sat down and Izuku sat next to him.

Inko knew that this talk was going to take a long time. "Do you need anything, Toshinori?" She asked. "Have you eaten at all yet today?"

"I've eaten a few meals. I'd appreciate some tea, if that's not too much trouble?"

"No trouble at all! Where is the kitchen?" She asked.

"Just around that corner." Toshinori pointed. "Thank you, Inko." She nodded and walked into the kitchen. Once she was gone, Toshinori turned his attention on Izuku. "Your mother told me that she told you about my desire to train you to become a hero, but she has not told you about the nature of my quirk, is that correct?"

"She hasn't told me anything about your quirk." Izuku answered. "And no one really knows what your quirk is, at least on all the hero forums that I read. I think it's a boost of your physical abilities, but others..."

"On the surface, you are right..." Toshinori said. "My quirk does boost my physical abilities, and I've dedicated my life to making sure that people do not guess beyond that. The truth about my power is that it is not something I was born with. My quirk was passed down to me from another."

"Passed down? But I don't understand. There's never been evidence of a quirk that is passed down this way before."

"Because mine seems to be the only one." Toshinori asked. "The true name of my quirk is One For All. One person holds the quirk, cultivating it, and making it stronger until it is passed to the next person who begins cultivating it even further. Each time One For All is passed on, the new holder's strengths are added to it, so it grows more powerful every time it is passed on. It is this generations-long network of power that allows me to save those in need."

"And you want to give this quirk… to me?" Izuku asked, shocked.

"You'll need more training first." Toshinori warned the young boy. "I can't just give it to you because you are my son. Whoever takes up my quirk will have to rise up and take my place as the Number One hero and the Symbol of Peace. I have to make sure that's something you can do, and that will become more obvious as we train your body. Either way, you'll need to train more than your mind to get into U.A. So, what do you say, my boy? Are you willing to live in Tokyo with your mother while I train you?"

"Yes… yes, of course!" Izuku gasped. How could he say otherwise? He had thought that All Might was just going to train him, but to possibly be the one to get handed this impossible gift of All Might's quirk?! "I… I mean… if it's okay with Mom."

"Your mother and I all ready talked about this when she visited me in the hospital." Toshinori said.

"Yes, we did." Inko said, stepping back into the family room with a tray with cups of tea. She handed one to Toshinori, one to Izuku, and kept one for herself. "I am okay with this, Izuku, if that is something that will make you happy."

"Good, then we can discuss the fine details." Toshinori said thoughtfully. "As you probably know, Izuku, my secret identity as Yagi Toshinori is considered a top secret matter of national security. In fact, it is multi-national national security! So it is still not a good idea for people to know that you are All Might's son. So you can say you are my son, Yagi Toshinori's son."

As much as Izuku longed to scream to the world that he had a father, and his father was the greatest hero to ever live, he knew that All Might was speaking the truth. No matter how hard anyone searched, no one could find any concrete information on All Might before his official debut in America. Everyone knew that he had attended U.A., but no one could find his actual name in connection with his eventual hero name because of All Might going by a different hero name when he was in school. All Might was his American hero name, after all. "Of course!"

* * *

A couple of days later, Toshinori had purchased a house for Inko and Izuku to live in Tokyo so that they could be close enough for Toshinori to train his son, and he had even made arrangements for Izuku's schooling at a private academy. So, almost as soon as Inko and Izuku finished packing and moving their belongings to Tokyo, it was time for Izuku's last day at his elementary school.

Just before Izuku left at the end of the day, his homeroom teacher pulled him aside. "I just want to wish you luck, Midoriya." He said. "I know that the future might not look very bright for those without a quirk, but you do have a future wherever you end up. You are a very intelligent young man."

Izuku looked at him, confused. He had always sort of assumed that his teachers barely knew his name, let alone paid him any attention. "Oh… thank you, sir." Izuku said.

"Good luck, Midoriya." The teacher bowed to him, and Midoriya bowed back.

As Izuku was leaving, Kacchan called out to him. "Are you really leaving?" He called.

"Yes." Izuku said nervously. "My father has come back from overseas and wants my mother and I to move to Tokyo with him."

Bakugou snorted. "Yeah right. You can leave this little shithole town if you want, but you'll never escape being quirkless. So whatever. Go. See you never, Deku, and good riddance." With that, Bakugou turned and stomped away.

Izuku stared after him for a moment, and then turned and left that part of his life behind and turned towards the future.

* * *

 **END OF ACT I**


	8. Chapter 8

**LES: I've gotta be straight with you guys. I know next to nothing about fitness. I'm overweight. I eat McDonald's on the regular. I haven't done any focused physical activity since college. The last time I ran a mile was in High School… I barely passed and almost vomited. I lie to my doctor about how much exercise I get by pretending my job is exercise. So don't expect this to in any way be based on reality. Even Googling would not be much help. It's one thing to Google the diet of someone who loses their stomach, it's another thing to Google what sort of exercise a nine-year old needs to prepare to receive a super strength superpower.**

 **To Readers On This Site: You have now reached the point where I don't have the rest of the chapters finished. So the wait time between chapters will no longer be just a day. More like once a week.**

 **ACT II: TRAINING**

 **Chapter 8**

* * *

When Izuku first moved to Tokyo, he kind of expected the place his father bought for his family to stay to be another apartment, but he was pretty shocked to find that he had bought them a house very much like his own. It was more than large enough for the two of them, and Izuku's new room was about twice the size of his old one, which was very exciting for him.

But what really got Izuku excited was his first training session with his father. He had seen Toshinori one time since moving to Tokyo, and his father had finished off the visit by telling Izuku to come over to his house on Sunday.

The rest of the week was spent unpacking and learning their new neighborhood, and checking out Izuku's new elementary school where he would start the next week. But, finally, Sunday arrived.

Inko walked Izuku back to Toshinori's house. When they arrived, it was pretty clear that Izuku that his father was still having trouble recovering from his injury. He had lost more weight, and was using a cane for his weaker left side.

"Oh my god, Toshinori, you have not been taking care of yourself, have you?" Inko asked with a sigh.

Toshinori sighed in response. "Inko… I've been trying to eat, but that's a little hard when I don't feel hunger and I can't keep more than a few bites at a time down."

Inko sighed again. "Let me go see what I can make for you." She made her way to the kitchen.

Toshinori sighed in exasperation. "I suppose I should just get used to that..."

"Is something wrong, All… I mean… Dad?" Izuku asked.

"It's nothing." Toshinori sighed. "I suppose I'm just not used to needing help." He stood up slowly, really favoring his left side. "Now, come with me." Izuku fell into step behind his father. Toshinori led him through the house until they made their way to a gym. Izuku looked around in shock. This was the sort of gym he would expect to see in a school. Life really was different for the Number One hero.

"Wow! There's so much equipment!" Izuku gasped, looking around. "Are you going to train me on these?" He asked.

"No." Toshinori said. "We are just using this room so that I can learn where you are at physically. Once I know where you are, I can make a training plan for you." Toshinori settled himself down on a chair. "Once I'm feeling better, most of your training will be out there, doing practical tasks."

"Oh. Okay." Izuku looked around, a little lost. "Where do you want me to start?"

Toshinori smiled. "First I want to talk about what you have been doing. Your mother told me that you've done some running for your stamina."

Izuku blushed a little in embarrassment. "Yeah… I spend about an hour after school running around looking for villain fights."

"About an hour of intermittent running?" Toshinori considered. "It's not much, but I can work with that. We have more than enough time..." He turned his attention back to Izuku. "Stamina is a very important part of being a good hero, and we will continue to work on that. But the thing that I want you to shift your focus to is enhancing your strength. One For All is a quirk that combines the physical abilities of everyone who has ever held it… so if it is passed onto you, you will be getting the physical strength of eight extra people. You will need a strong body in order to handle this quirk, otherwise you might not be able to handle the physical backlash of your own power." Toshinori paused thoughtfully. "You probably will be injured the first few times you use the power, but we can minimize that damage by preparing your body correctly. Thankfully, we have six years to accomplish this in order for you to be ready for the U.A. entrance exam."

"Okay." Izuku said. "Where do you want me to start?"

"Not on the machines." Toshinori said. "We'd need a spotter for you to use these machines. Normally, I'd do that for you, but I'm not able to do that. Let's just start with some sit-ups."

* * *

Izuku obeyed all of his father's commands to perform various exercises. Every time he finished a set, he would glance towards his father, looking for signs of approval, but All Might kept his expression neutral through the whole thing.

An hour passed, and then two hours. Izuku's limbs were shaking in an effort to keep going, desperate to prove himself to his father even if it meant working himself into exhaustion.

As All Might watched, he knew that one of the first things he would have to do was to teach Izuku the dangers of overworking yourself. He didn't blame Izuku for the way he felt. Toshinori had felt the same exact things when his own mentor had held her quirk out to him. Toshinori had spent many an evening in his youth completely passing out in the middle of training from overwork.

Finally, Toshinori saw signs that Izuku was going past normal muscle fatigue. He was trying to accomplish more push ups when Izuku's arms gave out and he fell face first on the ground.

"You've reached your limit." Toshinori told the boy calmly.

"No..." Izuku groaned, trying to push himself off the ground, but falling back down when his arms failed him.

"There is no shame in knowing your limits." Toshinori said, standing up and walking over to Izuku's prone form. "I was not expecting record setting performances from you today, Izuku. I just wanted to know your current fitness level so that we know what we have to build upon. Is it just your arms that you've exhausted, or have you pushed your whole body to its limit?"

"I… I think I can stand and walk if I can just get up." Izuku said, blushing into the padded floor.

"Very well." Toshinori positioned himself so that when he bent down to help Izuku up, he was lifting the boy almost exclusively with his right side. Izuku was so light he probably could pick up the boy with his left side, but it would cause his wound to flare up with pain and maybe cause him to cough up blood again. The coughing blood horrified Izuku every time he saw it, and Toshinori hated the panicked look in his sons eyes at the sight of blood.

He moved slowly, deliberately, and lifted the young boy off the floor and onto his feet. Izuku teetered for a moment until he found the strength to stand, and then straightened.

"Do you need help to walk?" Toshinori asked.

"No." Izuku answered.

But Toshinori took Izuku's left side so that he could offer the young boy some support on the way out to the family room and the couch.

"You don't have to..." Izuku began, worried about his father's physical condition.

"I'm fine, Izuku. I promise. Even in the state I am right now, I could easily bench-press you, even without using my quirk. It would hurt a little, but I can do it. This is nothing."

Izuku didn't quite believe his father, but allowed him to lead the way out to the family room. Once there, Toshinori set him down on the couch and sat down next to him. For a couple of moments, Toshinori seemed to be in thought, and then he spoke again.

"It's pretty clear to me that your physical abilities are not out of the normal range for a boy your age. That's about what I expected, and I believe I can come up with a plan for you to follow in a few days. For now let's talk about what I see as your great strength that could become your greatest failure as you train. Your dedication."

"I… don't understand." Izuku said, confused.

"Of course, dedication is a very important quality to have in a hero. And while you were working, I could see your drive to push yourself to your limits. This is a good quality to have, but too much can lead to you overworking yourself. If you overwork yourself, especially at your age, it could end up having the opposite effect of what we want. Instead of strengthening your muscles, overworking them can damage them beyond repair if not kept in check." Toshinori said. "So I need you to promise me right now, Izuku, that when you are given your training schedule, you will follow it to the letter. That you will give your body the full rest periods that it needs to recover from intense workouts, and that you will push yourself, but not to the point where your body stops working."

"I promise." Izuku said. All Might knew much more about training than he did, so he really had no choice but to follow his advice if he wanted to have any hope of getting strong enough to inherit his quirk.

"Now, come on, I'll drive you home." Toshinori said, standing up and leading Izuku to his car, a large luxury car that he had imported from America. In all honesty, it couldn't be helped. Most Japanese cars were too small for Toshinori.

On the drive back home, Toshinori continued to talk to Izuku, telling him to do a certain number of basic exercises every single day until next Sunday when he would come back to his father's house. "By then, I'll have the first part of your training plan all worked out. We'll start off easy for now, and grow in intensity as you get older."

As they pulled up to the new Midoriya household, Toshinori stopped Izuku just before he got out of the car. "One more thing, son. When you go to your new school tomorrow, the children are probably going to ask what your quirk is. Don't tell them you're quirkless. Just tell them that you are not allowed to reveal your quirk."

"So… pretend that I do have a quirk, but I'm not allowed to talk about it?" Izuku asked. "And everyone will… just accept that?" To be honest, Izuku was shocked that was an option. If he could have just pretended like he had a secret quirk at his old school, it would have saved him a lot of pain and suffering.

"It probably would not have been acceptable to have a secret quirk in a public school, but most of the private academies around Japan are used to caring for the children of pro heroes." Toshinori answered. "In order to protect their families, many pro heroes ask their children to not show off their quirks until they have better control of their abilities. Since quirks are genetic, it is usually simple to realize that a child is related to a pro hero through having similar quirks, and that could make the child a target for their parent's enemies. You'll probably see several other students unwilling to speak about or show off their quirks in any way. You keeping yours hidden will not be strange to anyone."

"Thank you, dad. I'll keep that in mind." Izuku said. "See you next week!"

"Bye, son." Toshinori said as the car door slammed shut.

Izuku had to stop himself from skipping as he made his way up to the front door of his new house. Finally being free of the label of being quirkless, even if it was just pretending…? Maybe, at long last… he could finally have some real friends…!


	9. Chapter 9

**LES: It seems from the show that Japanese schools (or at the very least schools in My Hero) go opposite from how American schools handle the school year. In America, the summer break marks the end of each school year, with the new school year starting in the fall. However, in My Hero, the summer break marks the middle of the school year, with the school year starting in spring. Because of that, I've made a tiny mistake. Izuku is starting his new school in the middle of the school year, but that means he's had a birthday (if all schools run the same way as U.A.). So he's 10 now, but still in 4th grade. Sorry for this mistake, or sorry if this new assumption is wrong. You can just blame me for being a dumb American if this is totally wrong. And, as for the name of Izuku's new school… I decided to follow the canon naming scheme… kinda. I went to a list of planets used in Star Wars on Wikipedia, scrolled up and down at random, and picked at random until I found a name that sounded vaguely Japanese.**

 **Chapter 9**

* * *

Izuku was a little nervous as he made his way to the office of his new elementary school. He opened the door and stepped into the office, and one of the people there took immediate notice of him. "Oh, are you our new fourth grade student, Midoriya Izuku?" One nice-looking lady asked as Izuku stepped into the room.

"Yes, ma'am." Izuku answered.

The woman got up from her desk and walked around to Izuku's side, kneeling down to his level. "Welcome to Rishi Elementary School. I've all ready read your file. Your father is the pro hero, and it's only recently that you discovered that your father is a pro hero?"

"Um… that's right." Izuku answered, a little shocked. This woman knew at least a little bit about his story? Did she know that his father is All Might? Maybe she did, as an administrator of the school.

"Then I'm sure that you've gone through a lot of changes recently, like transferring out of a public school. You don't need to worry too much. On the whole, you won't have a much different experience as you would in public school. The main difference is the teachers. Many of them are former pro heroes, and all of them have the license needed to use their quirk for the protection of students. In the event that you are ever endangered because of your father's identity, none of the teachers will hesitate to protect you. Of course, using your quirk is not permitted for the students just like any school."

"I understand. I promise I won't use my quirk." It was an easy promise to make, since he didn't have a quirk and his father had told him several times that receiving One For All was not guaranteed. All Might was giving him first choice, but he still had to prove himself worthy of One For All.

"Very good. Now, if you'll follow me, I'll take you to your homeroom..." The woman stood up and began to walk away, but Izuku stopped her.

"I have a couple more questions…?" Izuku asked.

"Yes, of course."

"Do you… does the school know who my father is?" Izuku asked.

"Only the administration and your teachers." The woman answered. "We were all very shocked when we found out who your father was, but I can promise you that we will keep your secret. You're not the only child of one of the Top 5 heroes in this school."

Izuku stared in shock, wondering who it could be. After a few seconds, he settled on Endeavor. Any one of the other Top 5 heroes could have a secret child like All Might, but he knew for a fact that Endeavor had a couple of children. The Number 2 hero made no secret of his family, because only a fool would go up against a hero neck-in-neck with wins with even All Might, maybe with even more wins since All Might's injury... When Izuku was very small, a villain had attempted to kidnap one of Endeavor's sons. The unlucky criminal was put in the hospital burn unit for over a year due to his injuries in the attempt. The incident had cost Endeavor a pay cut and the loss of a couple ranks, but the Flame Hero had not said a word in his defense, taking his punishment stoically.

"Are all of the children here the children of pro heroes?" Izuku asked.

"Not all, but most." The woman answered. "Some of the children come from wealthy families, and some are related to pro heroes in more ways than just being the child of one. Now, are you ready to meet your new classmates?" She asked kindly.

"I guess so." Izuku said.

She smiled at him and led him back out into the hallway, and then down a few corridors. Izuku tried to remember the way, but it would probably be a few days before Izuku could make his way around the school.

Finally, they made it to a door marked 4-C, and opened the door. "Good morning, Sakai-Sensei. I have your new student with me."

Izuku took a slow step through the door, turning his attention first to the students looking back at him. If this class was anything like his last one, it could hold about twenty students, but there was one empty seat probably meant to be his. Many of the students had quirks that effected their physical bodies, but most of them had quirks that didn't effect their bodies like normal. Izuku looked around for a boy that looked like a child of Endeavor, since he knew that Endeavor's youngest child was about his age and a boy, but he didn't see anyone like that in the classroom. Nor did he recognize any of the known children of pro heroes.

Finally, he turned his attention to his new Sensei. Sakai-Sensei was a woman, and kind of pretty if Izuku was any judge of such things. She gave Izuku a friendly smile. "Good morning, young man. Would you like to come up to the front and tell the class a little about yourself?" She asked.

Izuku stepped forward nervously. "Umm… hello. My name is Midoriya Izuku, and I just recently moved to Tokyo. It's nice to meet you..."

Sakai-Sensei was probably used to students being reluctant to talk about more, say like about their quirks or their parents, and according to the lady from administration, Sakai-Sensei knew that he was the son of All Might, but wouldn't talk about it. "It's very nice to meet you, Midoriya. Would you please take the empty seat next to Iida. Iida, would you assist young Midoriya to get him started?"

"Of course, Sakai-Sensei!" A young boy with bluish hair said from the seat next to the empty chair.

As Midoriya made his way to the empty seat, some of the students began to whisper to each other. "So, what do you think? Is he the child of a pro hero or just comes from money?"

"I don't know any pro heroes named Midoriya." Another student answered. "Maybe money?"

"I don't know. Just because there's no pro hero named Midoriya doesn't mean he's not the child of a pro hero that keeps their real name secret. Plenty of pro heroes keep their real names secret. My aunt does everything she can to keep her real name out of the press."

Izuku blushed a little as he took his seat. There was a stack of general education books on his desk, all of them looking brand new rather than the old used books he was used to from his old school.

"We start the morning by studying maths." The blue-haired boy stage-whispered to Izuku.

 _The sensei called him Iida. Why does that name sound familiar? He's probably related to a pro hero, but I can't think of an Iida off the top of my head._ Izuku thought to himself. "Oh, thank you."

"No problem." Iida said, chopping the air in front of him with a strange motion. Izuku stared a little, but then quickly adverted his eyes. In this quirk-based society, staring had become incredibly rude. Some people had quirks that changed their appearance or made them behave oddly, so staring had transformed into a social taboo.

"Your name is Iida, right?" Izuku asked to make sure.

"Yes." Iida replied. "But we can talk later, class is about to start." He all ready had his math textbook open to today's lesson, with his notebook and pen ready to go. "We're starting on page 394."

Izuku nodded and opened his math book up to the correct page, pulling out his notebook and pen as well.

* * *

Izuku had fallen a little behind in his school work in the last few weeks before moving to Tokyo because of his worry for All Might, but he was pleased to realize that his naturally studious nature was able to make up for the gap with a little extra effort. For every class, he had to look back on some of the previous lessons in the textbooks, but he was starting to fall back into his old study habits.

Finally, lunchtime arrived and Izuku made his way to the cafeteria. He was still too nervous to eat, so he decided to skip lunch for the day. Instead, he sat down at a rather empty table and pulled out his latest hero notebook. He had just finished Number 4, and this new notebook was to be Number 5. None of the students had revealed their quirks, except for the ones whose quirks effected their physical bodies in a noticeable way, but some of the teachers had.

So Izuku began to write in his notebook, taking notes of the quirks he had seen thus far, comparing the quirks he had seen to lists of former pro heroes, and trying to find out which retired pro heroes his teachers were.

His homeroom teacher, Sakai-Sensei was perhaps the easiest. He had seen her flying to get a book off the top shelf in their classroom. She was a famous rescue hero named Jetstream. She had retired not long after Izuku began keeping his hero notebooks and he'd lost track of her. But, not only that, knowing that she is Jetstream meant that she knew Izuku's father. Well… sort of. Many heroes had been involved in an old operation to put an end to the new Yakuza years ago. Both All Might and Jetstream had been involved. All Might had been on the front lines, with Jetstream as back up and support for the combat heroes.

Izuku was just finished up his new drawing of Jetstream as a teacher when a voice broke his concentration. "Ah, Midoriya, I was wondering where you were? Do you mind if I join you?" Izuku looked up. It was Iida, holding a tray of food in his hands.

"Oh, no. I don't mind at all." Izuku said, scooting over to make room for Iida to sit next to him.

"Excellent." Iida said, taking the offered seat. "You don't have any food. You should eat something, you know. A growing body needs fuel to function correctly, you know!"

Izuku suppressed a giggle. Iida sort of sounded like his mother when she was trying to force his father to eat. "I'm… kinda still too nervous to eat." Izuku said. "A lot of stuff has happened to me recently, and I'm still in shock."

"Really? Is everything okay? Should I get a teacher?" Iida asked, waving his arms in a karate-chop motion again.

"No, no… nothing like that." Izuku said, holding up his own hands to placate the boy before he called one of the teachers over. Izuku considered what he could speak about. His father had told him that he couldn't reveal that he was All Might's son, nor anything about One For All or being quirkless. But he didn't see any harm in just talking to his peers. "Well… I spent my life being raised by my mother, without every really knowing who my father was. I only found out who my father is a few weeks ago, and my whole life kind of changed really quickly after that. Just a few weeks ago, I was attending a run down public school about 40 minutes outside Tokyo. And now suddenly I'm here."

"So I suppose it's fair to say that your father is the pro hero in the family?" Iida asked.

"Well… yes. I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to say which pro hero. Sorry." Izuku apologized.

"That is completely understandable." Iida said. "Many of the students here keep their family connections a secret. However, it is harder for some than it is for others. Todoroki Shoto, in class 4-A… everyone knows that he's Endeavor's son. All of the teachers watch him carefully since he is the son of the Number 2 hero. And, well, some hero families are like mine, who proudly wear their family name so it's hard for me to hide."

"Oh, I was wondering..." Izuku began, and then flinched before starting again in a quieter voice as to not draw attention to them. "I think I recognize the Iida name, but I can't quiet place it. If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. I just..."

"Oh, no. I don't mind at all." Iida said. "The Iida family runs the Iida agency here in Tokyo. Pretty much every direct descendant of my family has been pro heroes for generations. Have you heard of the hero Ingenium?"

"Oh, yes." Izuku answered. The hero Ingenium had recently finished his time as a sidekick to other pro agencies before stepping out as a fully-fledged pro a couple years ago. He was all ready getting pretty famous for the sheer number of sidekicks he was taking on. It was pretty usual for a pro hero to have about five or six sidekicks working for them. Ingenium now had over thirty sidekicks working under him.

Iida smiled proudly. "Ingenium is my elder brother! He's just recently took over the Iida Hero Agency, but he's all ready a beloved commander with many sidekicks working under him!"

"Wow! That's amazing!" Izuku gasped. "I don't have any siblings… or at least..." Izuku trailed off. How was he to know if All Might had any more secret children hiding around? "As far as I know…?"

"What do you mean?" Iida asked.

"Well… my parents are not married. And my father has certainly had… a couple of relationships since I was born." Izuku said slowly. "I guess I could have a half-sibling out there without realizing it."

"Oh. I guess the other kids who are trying to google heroes named Midoriya are going to be disappointed." Iida said with a small laugh.

Izuku laughed in agreement. "Yeah, I guess. Midoriya is my mother's name, and my mother's family never had a strong enough quirk to become a hero. My mother's quirk is slight telekinesis. She can float small objects towards her. But that's about it." Izuku closed his notebook to put away. He was having a more interesting time talking to Iida right now.

"So, do you eventually want to try for a hero course?" Iida asked.

"Of course." Izuku said. "I've always wanted to be a hero! In fact, I eventually want to go to U.A.!"

"That's a very hard school to get into." Iida commented. "That's where I want to go to. Pretty much every single Top 10 hero calls U.A. their Alma mater, and my brother went there!"

"My father went there." Izuku said.

"Well, I can't even begin to guess who your father is, or what your quirk might be, but assuming your father is a pro hero and that you've inherited his quirk, you should have a fair chance of getting in." Iida said.

The two boys spent the rest of their lunch talking. They talked so much that Iida's food was only half eaten by the time they had to go back to class for their afternoon classes.

* * *

The rest of the day went by in a blur, but Izuku was pleased to the point of being giddy. Being able to keep his quirklessness hidden was an enormous blessing. None of the kids even blinked any time he said he couldn't talk about his quirk or who his pro hero father was. So without those bully-rich topics clinging to him, none of the kids had found anything they could easily bully him over.

Or… maybe the teachers were harsher on bullying in private schools? He'd only been there one day, but he hadn't seen any children getting picked on yet.

And, even better, for the first time since he was four years old, he had made a new friend. Iida Tenya was kind of funny in his mannerisms, but he was also very smart, helpful, and easy to talk to. When Izuku had said that he couldn't talk about certain topics, Iida had been quick to drop the subject and move on to a different topic.

After school, instead of walking home, he ran all of the way home, just like his father had asked him. Once home, he quickly finished the basic exercises that his father had asked him to complete and then set to work on his homework.

When he sat down for dinner, he noticed that his mother was giving him slightly larger portions and a greater variety of food than normal. When Izuku asked his mother about the change in menu, she sighed. "Your father asked me to adjust your diet while you are training. Right now, it's nothing major. He asked me to increase the amount of calories slightly, and to make sure each meal is nutritionally complete." She offered her son a second bowl of rice, which he accepted. "Now if he would only take such care of himself."

* * *

 **LES: I almost posted this chapter with the mistake of writing a name American-style. (Given name first, family name second.) If Toshinori does something like that, it's because he's forgotten that he's in Japan. If any other character does it, it's because I'm a dumb American.**


	10. Chapter 10

**LES: I've been waiting to write this chapter since I thought of this story. One of the scenes in this chapter was actually the mental image that popped into my head that kick started this story idea. Now I can finally do it!**

 **But before we get started, I'd like to give a quick shout out to fan fiction dot net user "Cyde" for giving me many helpful hints in regards to a possible training method for Izuku to follow. Basic exercises, the proper age to kick it into high gear, and other helpful advice. You've basically saved me from continuously writing: "Izuku did everything Toshinori told him" and leaving it at that.**

 **I've added a large FAQ at the end of this chapter with a couple of questions I'm getting asked frequently. If you have the questions: "Where is the Dad Might fluff?" "Is All Might being Izuku's father going to change him physically/make it easier for him to handle One For All?" "Please explain your pairings." or "When will the world find out that Izuku is All Might's son?" those questions are answered at the end.**

 **I think that's it for now. On with the chapter!**

* * *

 **Chapter 10**

Even after that first day in school, the whole rest of the month was a blur. Izuku had been kind of shocked when he went back to his father's house the next Sunday, the training routine that his father had given him was much less than he expected. It was more than he was used to, but less than he expected. It didn't seem to do any more than an extension of his physical education.

"Are you sure this is enough?" Izuku asked.

Toshinori smiled grimly. "We have many years to get your body to the point where it might be able to hold One For All. We have the luxury to train your body correctly. Doing intense muscle training at your age is not realistic. Muscle training works the best if we get started when you enter puberty and your body starts growing on its own. Right now it is going to be best to prepare your body for that more intense training with general fitness. We'll keep at this for a year, maybe two, and then you'll be longing for the days when I'm just expecting a couple of sit ups."

* * *

At the end of the month, All Might made his public reappearance. By flooding his body with the power of One For All, he could regain a facsimile of his old appearance. But he was never going to be the same again. His body could only handle about five hours of being 'powered up' a day. After that, his body would rebel and he would be forced back into his much more emaciated normal form. He could push his body past that limit with great effort, but the first time he did it, he found that his time limit had lowered by about ten minutes.

A couple of newspapers noticed All Might's decreased amount of time doing hero work, but most people assumed that he might be moving past his prime. The job of pro heroes was much like the world of pro athletes back before the time of quirks: the intense strain on their bodies often led heroes to early retirement. Most heroes were active for about 15 years. All Might had not reached that point, but many people guessed that holding the number one spot for so long was more of a stress on Toshinori's body than normal.

Toshinori laughed it off when asked about it, as he did about many topics personal to him. But, at the same time, he made no attempt to deny it.

To all the world, All Might seemed to be perfectly fine, but to Izuku and Inko, he was still in the process of falling apart. Every Sunday, Inko dropped off Izuku with his father, and made a small meal for Toshinori and forced him to eat. He ate when she forced him without complaint, but judging by the fact that he was still losing weight and muscle mass at a horrifying rate he was rarely eating when she was not forcing him.

He was probably down 70kg from his starting weight now, and was losing more weight every single day. And no matter how many times Inko asked him to take care of himself, Toshinori assured her to her face that he would eat, but she knew it was a lie.

However, that one particular Sunday, Inko had been unable to go with Izuku to Toshinori's house, so she sent a meal along with Izuku along with the promise to make him eat it. When Izuku got to Toshinori's house, he gave his father the food.

To tell the truth, Izuku was just as worried about his father as his mother was. Any time he was just him and his father, Toshinori stayed in his real form to save himself for his hero work. Izuku saw the way his clothes were hanging off his body, and the general unhealthy pallor of All Might's skin in this form.

"Welcome back, Izuku." Toshinori said, opening the door for his son. "Inko is not with you today?"

"No, she had to go shopping." Izuku answered, giving his father the small bento box. "But she sent me with this. She wants me to make sure you to eat it."

Toshinori took the bento box from his son without complaint. "You'll have to thank your mother for me later. Now, come on in and let's get started. You can go through to the gym and get started on your exercise and I'll go eat this."

Izuku was a little nervous about not seeing his father eat with his own eyes. But this man was All Might, and his father. He didn't know how to refuse even as his conscience screamed at him to say no and stay at his father's side until he had finished eating. "...Okay." Izuku said nervously, stepping past his father and slowly making his way to the gym.

But it was pretty clear to Izuku that he was very distracted at the moment. He completely lost count when he was doing push ups and ended up doing about twice as many as Toshinori asked him. He listened as closely as he could, hearing his father moving around the kitchen.

He moved on to sit ups. He had just completed his fifteenth sit up when he heard the sound of his father coughing in the kitchen. It was a normal sound, one that he was pretty used to even if the reminder of All Might's poor health was still scary. But then the noises from the kitchen changed, and Izuku paused in his exercise, losing count once again.

The noises changed from coughing to retching. The noises calmed down, and Izuku strained his hearing, but it was all silent. The young boy was about to call out to ask if his father was all right, but what happened next nearly caused him to jump out of his skin.

"FUCK!" The sound of his father's voice yelling in rage and anger scared Izuku out of his wits. He didn't understand what his father had yelled, but he didn't need a translation to know that All Might was enraged at something. But even the yell paled in comparison to the racket that followed the exclamation. Izuku couldn't be sure, but it sounded like the kitchen was getting completely destroyed. There was the squeal of metal, the sound of many things crashing to the ground. "FUCK MY LIFE AND FUCK MY FUCKING USELESS BODY!" All Might screamed, probably in English since Izuku couldn't understand. The next noise was the loudest of all. An enormous CRASH rang through the house. Something so big had happened that it caused the whole house to shake.

Izuku was absolutely terrified. Terrified to leave the gym, but also terrified to stay where he was. He stood frozen where he was for a few seconds, and when no more noises came from the direction of the kitchen, he decided that he had to go see what had happened.

He slowly made his way towards the kitchen, completely unsure of himself. Only the knowledge that All Might would _never_ hurt an innocent bystander kept him moving forward. _Should I make noise to let him know that I'm coming down the hall, or do I stay silent and spy on him?_ Izuku wondered to himself.

He still hadn't decided by the time he looked around the corner into the kitchen, so he just continued to stay silent… at least until he saw the state of the kitchen.

His father had apparently collapsed on the floor after his bout of rage. The floor was a mess, covered in a refrigerator's worth of food and blood. The reason that all of the food from the refrigerator was on the floor was made immediately clear. In his rage, Toshinori had apparently transformed into his muscle form, ripped the refrigerator up and thrown it through the wall. The crushed remains of the refrigerator lay where it had landed on Toshinori's back porch.

Izuku could see a couple of the neighbors peering over the fence in confusion, and he even saw one on her cellphone. If Izuku had to guess, she was probably calling the police.

"All Might?" He asked, absolutely terrified and completely unsure of himself.

"God fucking dammit..." Toshinori grumbled in English. He started retching again, and vomited a tiny amount of food onto the ground. Izuku found himself rushing forward, holding back his father's bangs out of his face as he continued to retch but nothing else coming up. After a few moments of dry heaving, Toshinori was finally able to just breathe. Finally, he spoke to Izuku in Japanese, his voice weak from illness. "Sorry for interrupting your exercise. I'm fine. Go back to the gym and finish up."

For a second, Izuku could only stare at his father in disbelief. Did he really expect Izuku to just ignore what was going on right now? "But you are obviously not okay." Izuku said nervously.

Toshinori took another few moments to collect himself, and turned to give Izuku a smile. But Izuku knew that the smile was fake. "It's fine, Izuku. I needed to replace that refrigerator anyway. It was much too large for my needs now."

"No, I don't believe that. I don't understand English, but I don't think you were yelling about renovation plans." Izuku gestured to the large hole in the wall. "And I don't think you needed to take out your kitchen wall if you just wanted a new refrigerator."

Toshinori sighed. "Izuku… you don't need to worry about me. I know I just had a bad moment, but it's over now. I'm fine."

"No. That's a lie." Izuku said firmly. "You're not fine. You've been getting worse and worse. Every week I come over here, you're getting sicker and sicker. I think my mom is right to think that you wouldn't eat a single bite if she didn't force you to eat. Now stop treating me like a baby that can't understand that you're hurt and let me help you." Izuku gave Toshinori no time to protest before he grabbed Toshinori's right arm and pulled to encourage his father to get to his feet.

Toshinori wordlessly accepted Izuku's help in getting to his feet, finally really looking around at the mess he'd made. He saw one of his neighbors peering over the fence and tried to assure her that everything was okay, but she ducked down as soon as he opened his mouth.

"I think one of your neighbors is calling the police. Go to the restroom and clean up the blood and throw up on your shirt, and I'll..." Izuku paused helplessly, looking around at the mess the kitchen was in. "I guess I'll start on this..."

"Izuku, you don't have to..." Toshinori began to say, but his son cut him off.

"No. Go take care of yourself. I can at least clean up the food, blood, and some other stuff." Izuku said, shoving his father out of the kitchen.

Realizing that Izuku would not budge on this, Toshinori left the boy in the kitchen and made his way to his bedroom for a new shirt and then made his way to the restroom. He took off his blood and vomit stained shirt and threw it carelessly into the shower to deal with later and splashed water from the faucet onto his face.

With his shirt off, he took a good, long look at himself. The body that he was once so proud off was deteriorating right before his very eyes. The remains of the wound that blossomed across his left side looked just as hideous as the day he'd left the hospital. He looked into the eyes of his reflection, deeply shadowed eyes were his eyes were sunken into his skull from malnutrition. His once strong cheek bones now jutted unnaturally from hollow cheeks. His bangs hung dull and lusterless in his face.

He was hideous.

Fucking hideous.

But he couldn't dwell on that right now. If one of his neighbors had really called the police, they could show up any moment. He pulled his new shirt on, took a small sip of water from the faucet to get the taste of vomit out of his mouth, and left the restroom.

He checked on Izuku in the kitchen. The boy had cleaned up the blood and vomit first, and was now picking up the food items that could be salvaged from the thrown refrigerator.

"Izuku..." Toshinori began, and then trailed off when Izuku turned to look up at him.

"What happened?" Izuku asked.

"I told you before, son. It's nothing." Toshinori began, but Izuku cut him off.

"Why won't you stop lying to me?" Izuku asked. "Both my mom and I know that things are wrong, and this just proved it to me. What happened?"

"I couldn't keep the food down." Toshinori said. "And that's all there is to it." He clenched his fist, angry at his ruined body, filled with rage at All For One, who had left him with this ruined body, and rage at himself for being unable to overcome it.

"Was it too much food?" Izuku asked. His mom had told him that, according to many online sources, people without their stomachs could still eat food, just in much smaller quantities with easily digestible foods being the best. So she tried her best to follow all of the advice with the food that she made for Toshinori. Tiny portions, no fiber, but still trying to pack in as many nutrients as she could in a single meal. It was incredibly tough, but online resources were a great help. If she was just sending over too much food, Izuku could let her know and she could make the portion sizes smaller.

"No, I mean I _can't keep the food down._ " Toshinori said bitterly, planting himself down on one of the chairs at the kitchen table. "But I shouldn't be bothering you with this… with my health problems. I'm your father, and you are my son. I should be worrying about you, not the other way around."

"Would you please stop treating me like I can't handle the truth?" Izuku asked. "I'm smart enough to know that you got hurt very badly, and to know that you were not going to just recover over night." Izuku slammed a container of rice on the counter a little harder than he should have out of frustration. "You don't have to treat me like a little kid."

"But you are little." Toshinori said. Izuku turned around towards him to protest the words, but then he saw the pensive look on his father's face. "And you're not so little, at the same time. I spent so much of your life away in America that I've completely missed almost your entire childhood. Now I've stepped back into your life… a man who is a father but has never been a dad. And now I'm trapped in a ruined body that you cannot possibly be proud of. When I was in America, so many young fans would tell me how amazing they thought I was, but how I was nothing compared to how great their fathers were." Toshinori trailed off, a couple of tears running down his face, and he furiously wiped them away. "I wanted more than anything to have that sort of relationship with my son. And now I do have you in my life, Izuku, but having Yagi Toshinori as a father is nothing to be proud of anymore."

Izuku stared at him in confusion. "How could I not be proud of you?" He asked.

"Because I'm not the All Might I once was. Certainly not the same All Might that you once looked up to." Toshinori answered.

"But you still are All Might." Izuku said. "All Might is just a hero name worn by Yagi Toshinori. No matter what, you will always be All Might, even if your injuries get so bad that you can't fight anymore. And I'll always be proud of you, even if you retire. You've done so much for the world that it will never forget, and I will certainly never forget."

Toshinori ducked his head down as more tears flowed down his face. He muttered a few sentences in English, and Izuku just waited quietly for it to stop. "Thank you, son. I'm so sorry you had to see me like that. Today has just been a bad day, and I promise it's not always this bad. Most days I can keep a few bites of food down, and my pain medication makes me feel better. Today is just..." He trailed off, hopelessly.

Izuku gingerly stepped across the ruined remains of the kitchen to the table, and wrapped his arms around his father. Toshinori started in surprise, but then relaxed into the hug, wrapping his arms around his son in return. "Can you let me help you… Dad?" Izuku asked.

Within a couple of seconds, there were tears flowing down each of their faces. But it was only to be expected. This was the first time that Izuku had called Toshinori 'Dad'. It had always been 'All Might' or occasionally 'father'. For the very first time, their years apart didn't matter. Toshinori was hurting, and Izuku was determined to help in any way he could.

Toshinori had seen this quality in Izuku before. He could be a bit of a crybaby and could be terrified of things, but nothing else mattered as soon as someone was hurting or in danger. It was like the drive to save was so powerful that it shut off every other thought. It was something that Toshinori himself experienced, and why despite being a hero known more for his fights against villains, he secretly loved rescue work a lot more.

Saving people's lives… that was Toshinori's motivation to be a hero. And he could see the same qualities blooming within his son.

They held onto each other for what seemed an eternity, but then they were interrupted by a knock on the door. Toshinori reluctantly let go of Izuku. "Pretty sure that's the police." Toshinori said. "Leave this to me." He took a small moment to wipe the tears off his face before going over to the door and opening it. It was a police officer, but it was one that Toshinori was very glad to see. "Tsukauchi!" He gasped. "They sent you?"

"Not really. They were going to send an officer who was closer, but when I saw the complaint came from your address, I pulled rank." Tsukauchi said, stepping inside All Might's home. Tsukauchi took a long look at this old friend. He had seen All Might a few times since he left the clinic, but his appearance was still a shock. "Now, would you care to explain to me what happened?"

"Sure, come this way." Toshinori said, leading his friend through to the kitchen.

Tsukauchi looked around, a little shocked at the devastation in the kitchen. "Wow… please tell me no one was hurt from this."

"You know me better than that." Toshinori said in reply. "I would never willingly put innocent people in danger. No one was hurt and the only property damage was done to my own things."

"I'm still worried about you." Tsukauchi said. "Sure, you are getting back into hero work, but I can tell that your identity as All Might is becoming more of a facade rather than who you really are. I'm starting to think that Sir Nighteye was right. You should think about retiring."

"It's not that I think you're wrong." Toshinori said. "But I can't stop. I don't know how to. I am the Symbol of Peace. What would happen to society if I were to retire without having a successor ready to take my place?"

"And are you at least looking for a successor?"

Toshinori gazed back at his friend thoughtfully. He trusted Tsukauchi with his life, and even with the knowledge about his broken body and One For All. He knew in his heart that he could trust him with his most precious secret. "I have one candidate. He is still very young, and many years away from being ready to take on One For All, but I'm growing more sure of my choice every single time I train him."

"Really? Who?" Tsukauchi asked.

"My son." Toshinori answered, and Tsukauchi stared at All Might in shock.

"Son? You have a son? Why did you never tell me?" Tsukauchi asked in shock.

"Because I wanted to protect him." Toshinori said. "Other than myself, the boy's mother, and the boy himself, only Sir Nighteye and Gran Torino knows that he exists and Gran Torino has not even met him yet."

"Wow. I'm actually very shocked. I know that you love children, but I never thought that you were the marriage and family type."

"Well..." Toshinori scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment. "The boy's mother and I… we are not married. We were not even in a relationship. We were friends. We both got very drunk one night, and things just sort of happened. We didn't mean to have a child, but it happened."

"How old is he? What is his name? Where is he now?" Tsukauchi asked.

"His name is Midoriya Izuku, he's 10 years old, and he's probably in my gym right now."

"Wait… he was in the house when all this happened?" Tsukauchi asked, staring around at the wrecked kitchen in shock. "Is he okay?"

Toshinori gave a little snort of laughter. "He's better than I am, if I'm being honest. Would you like to meet the young man?"

"Of course!" Tsukauchi jumped up. "I can't stay for long, though. Still on the clock, and all that."

"I understand." Toshinori said, before calling out. "Izuku! Come and meet my friend!"

Tsukauchi was obviously very awed to meet his friend's son. "He's very cute. I can tell that he must take after his mother more, but I can tell he's your son from his hair. It's messy like yours when you don't bother to fix it." And so it was. As All Might, Toshinori's hair was slicked back, with his bangs rising up like antenna, and his hair could still achieve that slicked back look when he pushed himself to look like his former self. But now in his real form, his hair was far more untamed, sticking out every which way without rhyme or reason.

Tsukauchi spent a couple more minutes talking to Izuku, learning a little about him, and answering some of Izuku's questions about Toshinori while he was at it, talking about his memories of Toshinori from his younger days.

Eventually, though, duty began to call and Tsukauchi had to leave. "I'll be sure to visit more often, Toshinori. Maybe I could come over next weekend, no crisis this time?"

"I would be happy to have you over next weekend." Toshinori said. This morning, he had been feeling so awful and sick that he didn't even know how he was going to get up this morning, and only forced himself to do so for Izuku's sake. But now that he was in the company of his friend and his son, he was starting to feel a little bit better.

* * *

 **1\. "Where is the Dad Might fluff?"**

 **I didn't include any fluffy stuff before this chapter because both Toshinori and Izuku were still awkward around each other. Toshinori was not in Izuku's life for his entire life, so they really don't know how to act around each other. But, as you can tell from this chapter, those walls are starting to break down.**

 **2\. "Is All Might being Izuku's father going to change him physically/make it easier for him to handle One For All?"**

 **Yes, there will be a couple of physical changes to Izuku. He is going to end up taller than he is in canon. Not as tall as Toshinori, but I'm thinking he'd easily hit almost six and a half feet tall once he's an adult (About 198 cm.) And he's going to be more muscular. In canon, he's more of a lean muscular, but now he's going to be a bit more buff. He's going to be able to use more than 5% of One For All right away. I haven't decided on a percent, but I'm thinking about 15% or so. Using more than his limit will still break his bones, but he's going to have more support right away to help with that. (AKA: Gran Torino knocking sense into Toshinori.)**

 **3\. "Please explain your pairings."**

 **This story will have a lot of sequels, and that's the point where pairings will start to happen. For those stories that do have romantic pairings, they will be background. Like the characters might kiss and chat in the story, but their romances will not be the focus. If I ever get the urge to buckle down and focus on a pairing, it will be separated out into a one shot so that those who are not interested in that pairing can easily avoid it. The only "main" pairing is Dad Might and Izuku as a father/son pairing. As for which pairings, I posted all of the pairings that I'm considering in the Authors Note of the first chapter. For those characters all ready listed as being part of a pairing, I'm not accepting any alternate suggestions for romantic pairings. Reminders to include really good friendship pairings, however, will happily be accepted.**

 **4\. "When will the world find out that Izuku is All Might's son?"**

 **I'm still considering my options. If that happens any time before Camino Ward, then I have to be really careful not to expose Toshinori as well. At the moment, I'm considering having Izuku not say anything about his father's real name in public, even though Toshinori gave him permission to do so, just to be safe. Maybe if it is revealed that he is All Might's son, Toshinori would have to change to pretending to be Izuku's uncle or something to protect his true form? I don't know yet. I'm still thinking about all my options.**


	11. Chapter 11

**LES: I would like to give another quick shout out to fan fiction dot net user AZNMAGICMAN. Just so everyone knows, if you send me an idea for a story beat, even if I decide not to go down that route, if I'm able to learn something interesting because of it, I'll always be thankful for it. I love learning new things. :) AZNMAGICMAN asked me if I would consider organ transplant for Toshinori's injuries, and googling this stuff was pretty interesting.**

 **Sorry about this chapter being a bit more rushed then normal. I want to update this story at least every Saturday or Sunday if I can't quite make the Saturday post, but this last week has been kind of crazy in my real life. I had a couple of things happen that kind of limited my time to work on this chapter. But I can at least promise a chapter of no less than a 1000 words, because I personally refuse to post chapters with fewer words than that.**

 **Chapter 11**

* * *

In the aftermath of the refrigerator incident, Toshinori took up temporary residence in a hotel while his house was being repaired, so the next Sunday, he and Izuku met up in a park instead for their training. At this point, Toshinori looked different enough from his All Might form that if he wore a hoodie no one bothered them.

Both Inko and Izuku were paying more attention to the state of Toshinori's health since his break down, and he was improving in some small ways. But the fact remained that there was no way he could take in the amount of calories needed to maintain his All Might form properly. He was still losing weight, but at a slightly slower pace than before.

But those small improvements still counted for something. Inko had reduced Toshinori's meals down to the easiest possible foods to digest, like soups and broths, and was slowly adding in more solid food as the weeks past. This gave his wrecked GI system a chance to grow used to digesting food properly without a stomach.

He was still not really able to reliably eat anything more solid than mashed food, but it was still an improvement over being able to hardly stomach anything at all.

Inko forced him to go see the doctor more often, so Toshinori went to see Recovery Girl at least once a week. There was still nothing that Recovery Girl could do, because replacing lost organs with her quirk is impossible, but she could at least try to assist him with the pain and try to guide him towards better health.

One day, while visiting Recovery Girl, Toshinori asked her a question that he'd been wondering about for a while.

"You want to know if we could get a doctor to perform a transplant to replace your stomach?" Recovery Girl asked.

"Yes." Toshinori said, digging his fingers into the shirt above where his scar spread across his side. "I know that it's rare and hard to get a donor, but..."

"You are right, it is rare." Recovery Girl said. "And do you know why? Transplants were always a difficult thing to consider, even before quirks, but the emergence of quirks made it nearly impossible. The risk of an organ being rejected by the body is always something that complicated transplant procedures. That's why blood type was always considered, and having the donor be a close relative was the best option. But quirks complicated everything. If the donor has a different type of quirk from the person receiving the organ, that greatly increases the risk of the body rejecting the organ. Besides, you will not be able to find a doctor willing to give you a stomach transplant. Humans can live just fine without their stomachs. If you got a transplanted stomach, even if it is not rejected, you will have to take immune suppressing medicine for the rest of your life. That would increase your risk of infections, illness, and certain types of cancer."

"What about other healing quirks?" Toshinori asked. "I know that you cannot regrow organs, but..."

"In all my years in medicine, I've never heard of someone having a healing quirk good enough to replace lost organs." Recovery Girl said. "Such a quirk user would no doubt be the most famous person in the medical community. But, alas, the natural limits that all quirks have seems to have put a limit on all healers that stop them from being able to heal everything."

So that was it, then. Going after a transplant was not a realistic thing to aim for. Recovery Girl said it herself: a relative with a similar quirk was the only real option that he had. Toshinori had only one blood relative left. His parents had died when he was very young, and he had no other family that he was in contact with… except his only blood relative… his son. Izuku, if he passed One For All onto him, was the only person in the world who could be a donor, and Toshinori would never put that burden on his son. Even if they could find a doctor willing to perform the surgery, Toshinori would absolutely refuse. So he thought no more on it, and simply began to work with what he had left.

While his house was getting repaired, he began to meet Izuku in the local park for training instead. And, even after Toshinori's house was repaired, they continued to go to the park when the weather permitted it.

"What happened?" Izuku asked one day.

"I'm sorry?" Toshinori asked, pulling himself back down to earth to pay attention to his son. He had completely missed Izuku's question while looking around to be sure that no one was recognizing him. Not that they had any reason to realize that he is All Might.

"Your… your injury." Izuku clarified, he completed his last sit up and then just remained sitting on the grass, craning his head to look up at his father. "You are so powerful… the strongest in the whole world! I still can't believe that there's a villain out there powerful enough to hurt you this badly."

Toshinori sighed and carefully lowered himself down to the ground to sit next to his son. He wasn't feeling particularly bad today, but sitting down on the ground like this was still a little painful. "That's why I don't want anyone to know what happened to me." Toshinori told his son. "Heroes and villains are mirror images of each other. The only thing that separates heroes and villains is the desire to help others, or the desire to only help yourself. We have many powerful heroes with amazing quirks out there protecting our society, but for every strong quirk working for the common good, there is just as strong a quirk working to tear it all down."

It terrified Izuku to think that there was a villain that strong out there. "And… what happened to the villain that hurt you? Is he in prison?"

"I… don't know." Toshinori admitted uneasily. "The villain managed to escape before Sir Nighteye could confirm that he was finished. But, I can assure you this much… as badly as I was hurt in the fight… he was hurt far worse. He might be dead now… and even if he was not dead… I don't think he'll ever be a threat again."

"But… I thought that heroes didn't have permission to kill villains." Izuku said, confused.

"Normally, they don't." Toshinori said. "And for any other villain, I would never consider killing if I can help it. But this was a special case. There are one or two people in the government who know about this villain and that threat he poses, so the men who went after him, including me, were granted permission to kill if capture was impossible."

Izuku stared at the ground. The idea that All Might had killed someone was… a little disturbing. Izuku had grown up thinking that heroes helped people… not that they turned assassin for the government… even for a powerful villain. "Have you ever… killed anyone… before that?" Izuku asked.

"Not directly, no." Toshinori said. "I have never killed another villain in combat, but sometimes being unable to rescue an innocent person from danger can make you feel just as bad as if you had killed them with your own hands." He raised his right hand off the ground, clenching it into a fist. "I still remember the faces of every person who cried out for me to help them that I was unable to save. I have saved far more people than I have lost, but it never gets easy."

Izuku wanted to be a hero. He wanted to save people just like his dad. So he could imagine the agony of reaching out to help someone only to fall short and fail despite trying your hardest. "How do you cope?" He asked.

"By pushing yourself even harder next time." Toshinori said. "When you are a hero, you always have to push yourself to be the best you can be. If I lose a civilian, I would much rather it be because they were actually out of reach rather than because of a failure to act at my very best on my part. It would be an insult to the memories of those I have lost to give any less than one hundred percent of my being with every rescue."

"Are you ever… scared?" Izuku asked.

Toshinori gazed at his son, a little shocked. "Is that what you think of me? That I'm some demigod of a hero who never gets scared? Come here, son." He lifted his right arm and Izuku scooted into place next to Toshinori's right side. "Of course, I'm scared. I'm scared out of my wits every time I go into battle or jump into a disaster to rescue people. Especially since my injury." He pat his left side, where Izuku knew where his scar was. "I haven't been this vulnerable since before I received One For All from my predecessor. I've certainly never had a weakness like this before. Before my injury, One For All was a quirk completely without drawbacks. But now my own body has become the weakness. I can't use it to its fullest now, and the harder I push myself, the worse it's going to get. And that's why it's important for you to get on with your training, young man. If you want to inherit my power, you can't sit on your laurels the whole time!"

"Of course, Dad!" Izuku said, standing up and moving a short distance from his father so he could resume his exercises with some lunges.

* * *

For about a half an hour, Toshinori watched Izuku complete his various exercises, and just as they were about to pack it up for the day, a woman screamed nearby.

Toshinori and Izuku both looked around in shock. There was a man who seemed to be able to turn his arms into spikes threatening a woman with a toddler, probably a mugging.

"Stay here." Toshinori ordered, before he stepped briefly behind a tree to transform into his All Might form.

Before Toshinori could finish his transformation, it appeared that the villain realized that the mugging was taking too long when any hero could be nearby, and he began to attack the woman and her baby. The woman screamed again and, as a reflex, activated her own quirk, which seemed to be a force field around her body. The villain hit the shield and was thrown backwards into another large tree with a considerable amount of force.

Everyone was staring in shock now, so much that it took a moment when All Might leapt forward for the bystanders to realize that he was there. "Fear not, for I am here!" All Might yelled his catch phrase.

"Oh god, I'm so sorry!" The woman gasped, staring in shock at the villain now trying to pry himself away from the tree. He didn't seem to have been hurt by being thrown, but one of his spikes did get stuck in the tree.

This, at least, gave All Might ample opportunity to restrain the villain without endangering anyone else at the scene.

As the people cheered, the scared mother dropped her shield and slowly approached All Might, clutching her child in her arms. "I… I'm so sorry, All Might! I didn't mean to throw him back so hard! He attacked and I just..."

"It's no problem at all, Mrs.!" All Might said. "I'm terribly sorry that I was late in jumping in to assist, but everything seems to have turned out all right! That is one powerful shield quirk you have!"

"I… thank you, All Might." The woman said, bowing to the hero and then rushing away.

Izuku waited quietly for the people to finish talking with All Might before Toshinori got the chance to get away. All Might bade them farewell and then rushed off in a flash. A few minutes later, Toshinori came back for Izuku in his unassuming normal form. "Let's take you home, Izuku." Toshinori said, taking his hand and beginning to lead him out of the park.

"Um, Dad? Are you sure it was a good idea to just let that woman go without any sort of warning? I know she was acting to protect herself, but she could have hurt someone with a shield quirk that repels someone that strongly."

"What do you mean, Izuku?" Toshinori asked.

"Well, isn't it illegal for someone without a pro hero license to hurt someone with their quirk?" Izuku asked.

For a few seconds, Toshinori didn't answer, but then he whispered an English curse word under his breath. "Shit." He turned around to look in the direction they had come from, but the people had all ready dispersed. "I completely forgot about that. I have spent far too long in America."

"What do you mean?" Izuku asked.

"In America, it is legal for even a civilian to use their quirk in self defense, even if the attacker is harmed." Toshinori said. "Americans view quirk control as they viewed gun control in the past. Almost any attempt to regulate quirk usage is met with serious protests. Pretty much the only regulations the American government can put on quirks is that all quirks have to be registered and only pro heroes can receive payment for their heroism. Even vigilantism is fairly common in America."

"Wow, America sounds like an interesting place." Izuku commented.

"It certainly was." Toshinori agreed.

"Why… why were you in America all this time?" Izuku asked.

"The villain that hurt me..." Toshinori began. "He had killed the person who held One For All before me while I was still at U.A. After I graduated, the man who took over my training thought it would be best if I left the country. By going to America, I could work as a hero, grow stronger, and gain mastery over my quirk in relative safety."

"If you had the choice… would you have been around?" Izuku asked.

"Of course I would have." Toshinori said. "I did want you in my life. I don't know if your mother ever told you this, but I proposed to her after she told me that she was going to have you. She turned me down… and she definitely made the right choice in turning me down. A marriage built on a single pillar is not a stable marriage. But I did want you, Izuku. I was willing to marry her and bring her with me to America."

Toshinori flinched a little as Izuku pressed up to his side. He looked down at the small boy, who was staring firmly at the ground with a small smile and light blush on his face. "Thank you for everything you're doing for me, Dad."

Toshinori smiled, and wrapped his arm around his son's shoulders. "You're welcome, Izuku."

* * *

 **LES: This chapter feels a little all over the place, more than usual. But I blame that on being rushed. I'm currently finishing this chapter on Friday at 10:30 at night, and most of it was written out over the last two days. Much more rushed then my usual schedule of writing at least a little bit every night after work… except for Tuesday night to make room for my other major hobby… playing Final Fantasy XIV. Gotta stay on top of server resets for MMORPGs.**


	12. Chapter 12

**LES: Lucky you guys! This week you're getting two chapters instead of one! Chapter 12 came out shorter than expected because I realized I'm dying to move onward with the story. More info at the end of the chapter...**

* * *

 **Chapter 12**

Over the last few weeks, Izuku had also made his first real friend in Iida Tenya. Back in public school, the other children definitely wouldn't have accepted his cover story about having to hide his quirk, but for Iida it was pretty normal since half the class also did not reveal their quirks.

But Iida had eventually shown Izuku his own quirk: the mutant-type quirk Engine, where he had engines in his calves that allowed him to run incredibly fast when he pushed himself. However, like most children their age, Iida was still a little shaky when it came to controlling his quirk. Specifically, when he got up to speed he had a hard time turning and breaking. Not to mention he was also prone to stalling his engines if he pushed himself too hard.

Izuku thought it was an amazing quirk, and he told Iida so while apologizing once again that he couldn't share the information about his quirk with Iida in return.

"I don't mind." Iida said. "I'll find out when we get to U.A., right? And then I'll probably even find out who your father is."

True to his word, Izuku had not said a word about being All Might's son. But he hadn't even told anyone his father's real name despite having permission to do so. Izuku knew from years of stalking that it was almost impossible to trace the hero All Might back to Yagi Toshinori, but that didn't mean that someone with better resources than just the internet couldn't do that. There were probably several pro heroes in Japan who knew All Might's real name, and could easily trace Izuku back to All Might if the information got out.

Weeks into their friendship, Izuku had not even allowed Iida to see his father, even in his far-less impressive real form. Iida knew that Izuku spent his Sundays training with his father, after Iida's first failed attempt to ask Izuku to visit his family on Sunday. But Izuku eventually got the chance to meet Iida's parents, both of them pro-heroes, and even got to briefly meet Ingenium once. In return, Iida had met Izuku's mother.

Inko had cried tears of happiness that day after Iida left to go home. Iida was the first child that Izuku had ever brought over to hang out with since Bakugou, and Iida seemed like he was far more well behaved than Bakugou.

Not only that, but Izuku had made a couple of friends in his new class. Iida was his best friend, but there were a couple of other boys in the class that Izuku enjoyed spending time with.

And it seemed like Iida largely felt the same way. The only boy was not exactly popular in the class. He was a little too serious a student to ever step out of the stigma of being a nerd, but Izuku didn't mind that at all. Sure Iida was much smarter than him in many ways, but Izuku was not stupid. He was a good student. Although neither of them could really compete with the smartest and one of the most popular students in their class.

Yaoyorozu Momo.

Like many of the students, they did not know a lot about her. All that anyone knew about her was that she was very rich from having both of her parents be pro heroes. At first, Izuku couldn't even imagine speaking to her… to any sort of girl at all! But that all changed one day when he was sitting under a tree working on his notebook.

"Hello?" A voice asked, and Izuku almost fell over when he looked up and saw… Yaoyorozu! He completely froze. "I'm sorry to bother you… Midoriya, right? I just see you working in that notebook all the time, and I was wondering what you were writing in it?"

"I, er..." Izuku began. He knew that he was being completely weird. So he stopped, took a breath, and started again. "It's a hobby of mine. I kind of like to study other people's quirks."

"Study? How?" Yaoyorozu sat down next to him, which almost caused Izuku to lose his ability to speak again.

"Well..." Izuku began, turning the notebook around to show her the page he was currently working on: which happened to be Endeavor. A rescue that he'd been a part of last night made Izuku rethink his possible highest temperature fire that he could produce, so he was updating Endeavor's page with the new possible information. "I like analyzing other people's quirks, finding strengths and weaknesses."

"Oh. So do you have some sort of copy quirk?" Yaoyorozu asked. "And you take all of these notes on quirks that you might have to use sometime?"

"Oh, no! Nothing like that!" Izuku said quickly. "I don't have any sort of copy quirk. I just find it interesting to analyze quirks."

"Well, I still find that really interesting. If you get really good at that, you could probably quickly analyze any villain you come across." She suddenly gasped. "Oh, I'm sorry… I assumed that you are eventually going to try to be a hero."

"Oh, no, that's fine. Back in my old school, every single kid wanted to eventually go into the hero track. I do want to go into the hero track myself."

"Then that hobby could be a great help for you." Yaoyorozu said. "I have a quirk where I have to study a lot for it to work its best, so I suppose I understand having a hobby just for eventually making yourself a better hero. Anyway, thanks." She stood up and waved as she left.

Izuku stared after her for a few seconds before his brain kicked into gear again. _Oh my god… I talked to a girl!_

That had certainly never happened before. And, at first, Izuku thought it was just a one-off thing. But then Yaoyorozu found him and Iida the next day, much to Iida's surprise. "We are pleased to have you in our group, but won't your friends miss you?" Iida asked.

"Sometimes friendships don't work out." Yaoyorozu said, sitting down next to the two boys. "I'm the child of two highly ranked pro heroes and very wealthy because of it. I just found out that many of the people who used to talk to me only did so because of my parents or how rich I am."

To be honest, Izuku had no clue how wealthy All Might was. The Number One hero was naturally tight-lipped about his finances, but Izuku could make guesses that he was probably very wealthy but also pathologically unable to spend any of that money on himself. After all, his house was very modest and almost spartan when it came to decoration. Despite spending almost nothing on himself, he completely made sure that Inko and Izuku had plenty of money to live on, and he continued to donate vast sums of money to various charities. So Izuku knew that his father was pretty wealthy, he just had no idea how much, nor did he ever experience what some might call the wealthy lifestyle.

And while Izuku had no first hand experience with people trying to befriend him only for money or because of who his parents were, he could imagine how upsetting it would be. He would not be able to hide the fact that he was All Might's son forever. And when the day of his exposure came, would the friend that he had right now leave him? Would he be flooded with a bunch of fake friends only looking to get closer to All Might?

"I have… experienced that before." Iida admitted. "I'm sorry that happened to you, Yaoyorozu."

"I'm sorry, too." Izuku said. "I haven't experienced anything like that, but I probably will when I can speak openly about who my father is. I suppose the only thing you can do is hope that you pick the right friends. Friends who are there for you because they like who you are, rather than how much money you have or who your parents are."

Three young children, all facing the same burdens and obstacles on their paths to becoming heroes. All three of them singled out from their peers by the expectations of high ranking pro hero families. And all three of them with the innate understanding of the challenges they faced on that journey to become heroes… a journey that will be filled with pain and blood and hard work. These three knew that the journey ahead would be hard, but they could support each other, and support themselves along with way.

* * *

 **LES: Despite being probably the shortest chapter, this one was probably the hardest to write. Not in finding time, but in finding ideas. To be frank, I'm going to do a time skip next chapter. We are going to skip forward in time to about the time that the anime started: 10 months before the U.A. entrance exam. Here's some small tidbits from the time skip that are not worth whole chapters:**

 **1\. Despite going to the same elementary school, Izuku and Todoroki never ended up in the same class. As one of my reviewers pointed out, Endeavor would probably check the backgrounds of every single child in Todoroki's classes, and probably would have forcibly found out about Izuku being All Might's son. He probably would have told his son to set up their rivalry. And, to be frank, I want to preserve the "Are you All Might's secret love child?" scene, because that's a riot. (Do I need a better reason than this?)**

 **2\. Izuku, Iida, and Yaomomo all went to the same middle school, which for the sake of convenience will be Somei Private Academy. I've had one reviewer ask me if I remember that Iida went to this academy, and from the written tone I can only assume that this a real school and messes up my limited geography about Japan/Tokyo. And to that, I say… fictional world and AU of that fictional world. This Somei Private Academy is in Tokyo, along with U.A. itself. After all, we know that MHA is not a perfect reproduction of the real world Japan. There is probably no Kamino Ward or a Dagobah beach, after all. Why I don't think that U.A. is in Musutafu? Because Izuku says its a forty minute train ride from his apartment in Musutafu to U.A. I guess I could be wrong in this assumption. We're not that big on trains here in California. Someone in New York City could probably say if a train could take 40 minutes going from one side of a city to another, but it's just not something in my experience.**

 **3\. All Might started the process of joining U.A. as a staff member a little earlier than he did in canon, but not as a teacher. He started off as a guest lecturer. His time has decreased like it does in canon, so he's having a hard time maintaining himself as a pro. He knows he's going to have to retire soon, and has decided to eventually move into being a teacher for all young heroes. Izuku's first year will be his first year as a full-blown teacher rather then just a regular guest speaker.**


	13. Chapter 13

**LES: The times are based on a translated copy I found of the "Aim to Pass American Dream Plan." Of course, we only ever see the first page, so I have to make up the rest. But I changed it up a little. Since Izuku has years to work on the Aim to Pass American Dream Plan, cleaning the beach is not going to last the whole time. So I'm adding in that Izuku spent some time cleaning a mountainous national park as well. For that one, it was less about picking up trash, since there is less trash, and more about hiking and carrying what trash he could find over long distances and rough terrain, and the park will involve this AU's version of the 'heroic act' that impresses All Might, similar to Izuku rushing in to save Bakugou in the manga/anime. Thanks to Toshinori being Izuku's biological father, he is much taller than he is in canon. From this point through about the time the anime is now, Izuku is 180cm (5'9ft) tall. That's a little bit taller than Iida (179cm), but not as tall as Satou (185cm).**

* * *

 **Chapter 13**

Years passed and Izuku continued to give his all in his training to hopefully receive One For All one day. And that training was harder than ever. When Izuku had turned 12 years old, the length and difficulty of his training had stopped being a gradual increase and had suddenly vastly increased in difficulty.

Until then, Izuku's every day exercises had been pretty tame, with only their Sunday training sessions having any intensity. From the age of twelve onward, his training schedule reversed. Every day was intense with the exception of Sunday as a resting day.

With Izuku's basic physical fitness worked out, now that his body was naturally growing as he aged, Toshinori told him it was the time to start working on adding muscle mass to his already fit body. The one thing that Toshinori worried about the most was the possibility of a backlash injury. When Toshinori had first used One For All, the backlash broke the skin on his fingers and left his right arm and shoulder sore for over a day. His master had been shocked that he had only been hurt a little bit by the power. He remembered well how worried his master was that he was going to break bones in his first attempt, as she said she had. If there was going to be a backlash at all, Toshinori could only hope that the years of training would limit it.

Every morning, Toshinori had Izuku waking up at four in the morning, and completing some of the basic exercises that he was used to, but a lot more of them, along with running and Tai Chi. And then Izuku went to school. After school, it was back to training. He caught the bullet train to Dagobah beach where Toshinori had given him his main assignment. For three hours every day of training, Izuku spent his time cleaning the beach.

Dagobah beach had once been a beautiful place for a day trip, but that had been long before Izuku was born. From his childhood, he just remembered it as a ruined beach, a place of illegal garbage dumping and where the natural ocean currents pushed even more trash onto the shore. Just like the men training for strongman challenges, lifting and carrying the differently sized and weights of the trash forced Izuku to use his whole body in the attempt to clean the beach.

The first time that Izuku succeeded in cleaning the beach, it had taken him over a year. And after the beach was cleared, Toshinori had him cleaning up trash in a national park. The greater amount of area to cover, along with the hiking in order to reach the areas he was cleaning made it an even greater challenge than the beach. It was a never ending job, as well. Far too much for one boy to handle. So after a year, when the beach filled up with trash again, Toshinori put him back on beach duty. From that day, they switched off. When Izuku finished cleaning the beach, he started with the national park again. Once the beach had some trash on it, he went back to the beach.

Toshinori was there every day that he could spare, which was most of them, taking note of Izuku's work and altering his evening training on the fly. With the extra care of Inko, Izuku and Recovery Girl, Toshinori's health had somewhat stabilized over the last few years. He was no where near what he used to be because regaining his former strength was impossible, and his refusal to stop hero work kept total recovery out of reach, but he was still in a far better place than he was five years ago.

At 7 o'clock, Izuku returned home to his mother for a large dinner. Then Izuku finished off the day with homework, his evening work out, and finally going to sleep at midnight, only to repeat the process four hours later.

It was intensely tough for Izuku, especially for a preteen and teenager waking up that early. But he couldn't deny that it was working.

About ten months left until the U.A. entrance exam found Izuku staring at himself in the mirror. The first major changes had been to his height. Perhaps it was not so surprising considering that Toshinori was a giant of a man, but Izuku's growth spurts had been very kind to him thus far. He was much taller than his mother, and taller than most of the other teens in his class. He currently stood about 180 cm tall. He was slightly taller than Iida.

But that was not all. The one thing that had really changed about him was his muscles. Years of training had left its effect on his body, leaving him with a body that Toshinori compared quite favorably with his own state of fitness when his master had passed One For All onto him. Of course, he didn't boast the sheer muscle mass that his father had in his All Might form, but Toshinori assured him that was unrealistic for the time being. He had trained with One For All for about four years before he gained his heavily muscled body, as Toshinori explained at the beach one Saturday evening after their three hours of cleaning was complete.

"For most of the time I was training at U.A., I actually looked closer to my current true state." Toshinori told him in English. "I wasn't nearly as buff as I was before I made my debut in America. It helped to distance myself from the U.A. student Yagi Toshinori."

"Well I suppose it worked." Izuku replied in accented English. Having a father who spoke English like a native was a great help when Izuku started taking English lessons in Middle school. Toshinori was always willing to help him with the subject, and after his second year studying English, Toshinori changed things up so that they mainly communicated in English when they were together to help him get a firmer grasp on the language. His father was almost sorely responsible for his top grades in English.

"Dad?" Izuku asked after a few minutes of silence passed between them.

"Yes, son?" Toshinori replied.

"I don't mean to… pressure you..." Izuku said slowly. "But I wondered if you are ready to decide..."

"To decide if I'm going to pass One For All onto you or not?" Toshinori finished.

"Yes."

Toshinori smiled at his son. In all honesty, he had made the final decision months ago, on probably one of the most terrifying days of his life. Izuku had been spending one of his Sundays up in the national forest alone doing his clean up while Toshinori waited at the park entrance with a pick up truck to haul away the junk Izuku was cleaning up.

However, about two hours in, Toshinori had overheard one of the park rangers talking about how an unattended fire had begun to spread through the forest. He had no idea where the fire was or how big it was. He could track Izuku's phone, but that would not give him information about the fire.

In a panic, Toshinori pulled up the GPS information for Izuku's phone, transformed into his muscle form, and rushed into the park. Finding Izuku had been quite the shock.

The boy had apparently had a close run in with the fire. On Izuku's way back to the park entrance, he had found himself on the edge of a growing forest fire. He probably could have escaped fairly easily by himself, but while escaping he had run into a small group of hikers trying to escape the fire as well. Izuku had slowed down in order to guide them all to safety, putting himself at much greater risk in the process.

But still, even with Izuku to guide them, the group was moving much too slowly. Thankfully, All Might's arrival saved them all, as he easily extracted the entire group from the fire. Toshinori had been absolutely terrified at the thought of Izuku trapped in a fire, but he had done just about as well as anyone could expect without a quirk. And he had not said anything, but that was the day that he decided: his son was worthy of One For All.

"You've worked very hard over the past months, my son." Toshinori said, giving his son a genuine smile and stood to face him. "One thing has become clear to me, even as you were pushed to your limit with this training. You are determined and you have the heart of a hero. And, soon, you will have the physical abilities of a hero. One For All is yours, Izuku, if you still desire it."

Izuku almost couldn't believe it. Years of disappointment and training had finally come to this moment. He had impressed his father enough that he was going to offer his incredibly special quirk to Izuku, the quirk that allowed All Might to become the undisputed Number 1 hero: One For All!

"Yes! Yes!" Izuku yelled, slipping back into Japanese with his excitement. "Yes! This is everything I've ever wanted! How does this work? Are you going to give me your power now? How long until..."

"Whoa!" Toshinori laughed, before joining Izuku in speaking Japanese. "We'll have your award ceremony tomorrow. Come here to the beach after you finish your morning exercises. I'll transfer One For All to you, and then we'll spend the rest of the day teaching you how to activate it. For people born with transformation or emitter type quirks, activating them is as natural as breathing. But you've never had a quirk before. You'll have to get the hang of activating your new quirk, and then we'll see how you handle the power. But I don't foresee any major difficulty. But I'll have Recovery Girl come by just in case."

"How… badly might I be hurt?" Izuku asked, a little nervous.

"I was not hurt too badly." Toshinori answered. "Split skin and sore muscles. But my master was worried about broken bones. And that's what Recovery Girl will be there for, to heal you just in case."

Izuku stood and bowed at the waist. "Thank you, for everything you've done for me."

Toshinori walked forward, grabbed Izuku's shirt and pulled the young man into a firm embrace. "Stop acting so formal, my boy. I did nothing except guiding your growth. It was your hard work that brought you this far. Never forget that."

Izuku felt tears start to form in is eyes, and quickly pressed his face into his father's shirt. Toshinori was always playfully telling him off for being a crybaby. "Even still… thank you, Dad."


	14. Chapter 14

**LES: I know that a lot of people are excited for Izuku to be able to control One For All fully since he is the biological son of Toshinori in this AU. And it's not that I think this scenario is completely unlikely. It is highly likely. The only problem with this is that I'm not sure if I have the writing chops to pull off "One Punch Man" without the clever shonen deconstruction… or even with the shonen deconstruction. I don't want Izuku to be able to swoop in and defeat almost every single villain with a flick of his finger. Look at the manga/anime. All Might probably could take all of these villains out with a single punch, especially if he was in his prime. So they introduce the drama of his injury, that he has a limit that we as an audience have to worry about. It makes us worried about All Might in every single one of his fights, even if he is the strongest. In One Punch Man, Saitama says that "Overwhelming power is actually pretty boring." Izuku needs a limit to stay interesting. So, nope. Izuku is not going to be able to control One For All totally, but he will be better than he is in canon. In order for him to be better, but to keep things still interesting and fair, Izuku is at the level of being able to control about 10-15 percent, which is only slightly worse than his current state in the manga.**

 **Chapter 14**

* * *

Izuku couldn't be sure how he managed to get to sleep that night, because he was just too excited for what was going to happen the next day. But, somehow, he managed to fall asleep, just way later than normal.

His alarm clock went off at four in the morning, after only about two hours of sleep, but for one of the first times, Izuku hardly minded. His body was flooded with energy and he did not consider pressing the snooze button even a single time. He jumped out of bed, moved silently down the hall to avoid making too much noise for his sleeping mother, and took a shower.

He got dressed, and went on his morning run. By the time he got back, his mother was up and getting some breakfast ready. Izuku was almost too excited to eat, but forced himself to eat a couple of bites. His dad was still a little wishy-washy about eating all of his meals every day, but he did not tolerate Izuku skipping meals while they were training.

"Toshinori told me that he's going to transfer his quirk to you today." Inko said, glancing at her son. He nodded with is mouth full. "Please, be careful today, Izuku. Everyone has trouble controlling their quirk when it is first manifested, but it will be especially difficult for you. When I was a child and lost control of my quirk, I never did anything except accidentally pelt myself with small objects. Toshinori's quirk, however, is far more powerful and destructive. An accident could… I don't know… level an entire city block."

"Now you're making me nervous." Izuku said.

"You'll just have to learn fast." Inko trailed off thoughtful. "I just wish I could be more helpful. For me, activating my quirk is like having muscle memory. I can do it easily, but I really can't explain the process I use to activate my quirk." Inko held up her hand and drew her fork into her hand with her quirk. She stared at the fork thoughtfully, set it down, and drew it into her hand again. "I just want the fork in my hand and I can do it without much thought. And I have no idea how to explain this."

"It's okay, Mom. Dad was quirkless. Maybe he remembers how he learned how to learn to activate a quirk." Izuku said. Once he finished breakfast, he decided to go to the beach early. He felt like he would go crazy sitting around the house any longer.

* * *

Even the bullet train felt like it took too long. Once Izuku got to the beach, he was not shocked to see that his father had yet to arrive. A few pieces of trash had appeared on the beach since the last time Izuku had been here, so he busied himself by cleaning up the trash.

By the time he finished, Toshinori had arrived. "I suppose you were too excited?" He asked as he walked over to where Izuku was stretching out on the beach.

"Dad!" Izuku gasped, rushing over to meet him. And Toshinori needed no further answer. The look on Izuku's face told him everything. He probably got little to no sleep last night, but he was so excited that it didn't matter. Nana had surprised him with his own award ceremony out of the blue at the end of training one day, but if he had known it was coming he probably would have been too excited to sleep too.

Toshinori ruffled his son's hair and transformed into his more muscular form, still towering over his son even with all of his growth spurts in the last years. "Words cannot say how proud I am of you. You've exceeded all of my expectations and more. The one who passed One For All onto me said that this quirk is fundamentally different from all others. Unlike others who are born with their quirks, One For All must be earned. Never forget the difference between power that is earned and one that you are given by chance." He reached up and plucked a single strand of hair from his bangs. Izuku watched him, a little confused.

Toshinori would be lying if he said that that wasn't looking forward to this a little bit. Nana had laughed in his face when she saw his expression when she told him how the power was passed on.

Toshinori held the hair out for Izuku to take. "Eat this."

He was not disappointed at all. Izuku's eyes widened and his mouth fell open in a surprised gasp of shock. "Huh?"

"In order to inherit my power you've got to swallow some of my DNA, that's how it works." Toshinori said with a small laugh. Oh, he was enjoying this.

"I… don't know if I can swallow hair..." Izuku said.

"I'm not heartless." Toshinori said, pulling out a water bottle for Izuku. It was still gross, but the water would at least help the process.

Izuku took the hair in a trembling hand. He hesitated for nearly a minute, staring at the strand of hair like it was an impossibly large meal that he was being forced to eat. Finally, his face set on a determined expression and he shoved the strand of hair in his mouth before he could change his mind.

Toshinori handed the boy the water bottle, and he immediately began to gulp down the water in an attempt to force the hair down with the help of the liquid. It still wasn't easy. Izuku drank the entire bottle of water, and Toshinori pulled out a second one from his coat just in case he needed more.

Izuku had his hand pressed to his mouth, a look of disgust on his face. "...think I'm gonna be sick." He muttered.

"Hey hey, don't do that now!" Toshinori admonished him. "If you throw up you'll have to do the whole thing over again. Keep it down, son."

Izuku sat down on the sand, holding his head between his knees. Classic anti-nausea tactics. Toshinori sat down next to him in the sand, second water bottle at the ready. After about three minutes, Izuku accepted the second bottle and took sips of the water every couple of seconds.

"You've got it down?" Toshinori asked.

"I… I think so." Izuku said shakily. "But… I don't feel any different..."

Toshinori laughed. "Of course not! Your body has to digest the hair first!" He glanced at the time on his smart phone. "It should kick in in about two… maybe three hours."

* * *

Over the next couple of hours, the two just took it a little easy. Well… Izuku did. Toshinori went back to his car and came back with a shovel. He set to work shoveling the sand into a large pile, patting it down with the flat of the shovel to make the pile a little more firm. "What are you doing?" Izuku asked after about an hour.

"We don't have a punching bag here, so we'll just have to make due." Toshinori said. "This is just a little something for you to punch the first time you use One For All. The soft target will not cause much of a backlash and lower the chance of a serious injury."

From there, Toshinori started giving Izuku tips on activating his quirk when it manifested. According to Toshinori, it took a certain about of willpower, and also the straining of the muscles: the difference between simply moving your arm and flexing it.

About two and a half hours a short, elderly woman showed up at the beach. "You know, Toshinori, you could have been more specific when you told me to meet you at Dagobah beach." She called as she walked up to them.

"Ah, sorry about that." Toshinori said, grinning sheepishly. "Izuku, allow me to introduce Recovery Girl. She helped save my life in the battle that injured me, and she's been helping me ever since as well. She's also the U.A. school nurse."

"Oh!" Izuku gasped, shocked. He had heard his father talk about Recovery Girl a few times, but he actually didn't know a lot about her despite her being a pro hero and the U.A. school nurse. Support heroes ranked only slightly above underground heroes in terms of overall popularity, but their roles were vital none the less, despite almost never rising above the level of sidekick. "It's very nice to meet you, Recovery Girl!"

"And this is the boy that I've heard so much about?" Recovery Girl cast a once over on Izuku, and then shrugged. "Never would have guessed this was your son just from looking at him."

"I… take after my mom, mostly." Izuku said with a slight blush.

"I called Recovery Girl down here in case something goes wrong. Her healing quirk will be able to handle just about anything that could happen. Broken bones, strained muscles, bruised skin, etc. She knows the secret of my… our… quirk so she is the ideal person to help." Toshinori said.

Recovery Girl took a moment to get a good look at Toshinori's son. Sir Nighteye, after splitting off and forming his own hero agency, had taken to hiring a U.A. intern at every opportunity, hoping to find one that he felt would be a better carrier than All Might's son. She had heard him complain about it numerous times, to both herself and the principal.

Psychically, he seemed the type. Probably thanks to Toshinori's genes, he was taller than probably most children his age and years of training with All Might had made the boy pretty muscular. All that was left was personality, and that would take time to figure out.

"All right! Are you ready to give it a try?" Toshinori asked.

"Uh… yeah!" Izuku walked over to the pile of sand. He clenched his fist and tensed his muscles, trying to do everything that All Might had said. After a few seconds… something changed. It kind of felt like… well… it was kind of like the tingly feeling that you get when a limb falls asleep, except without the numbness. So maybe it was more like an electrical feeling?

Izuku threw a punch at the pillar of sand, and the pile was completely obliterated, along with a lot of the beach sand being blown away by the shockwave of the punch. Izuku stared at the aftermath in shock. It had really worked! He had All Might's quirk after all! One For All… it was his!

He felt a bolt of pain shoot up his right arm, and he stared at his arm. I didn't look injured, but he certainly felt injured.

"Wonderful! That was perfect!" Toshinori said, grinning. "How is your arm?"

"It hurts..." Izuku said.

"Probably a strained muscle." Toshinori said. "Punching the sand didn't cause a backlash, but your muscles are still unused to the power of One For All." He walked forward and carefully inspected Izuku's arm. "Nothing broken, not even your skin. That was perfect. Recovery Girl, can you help him?"

"Certainly." She said. She walked over and Izuku knelt down for her. She took his right arm in her hands, inspected his arm for a second, before she pressed a kiss to his hand.

"Er… what?" Izuku gasped, a little shocked.

"It's how she administers her quirk." Toshinori said.

He was right, all ready the pain was fading away until his arm was like new again.

"Now, let's see how you fare against a more solid target." Toshinori said, transforming into his muscle form and holding his hand up for Izuku to punch, his other hand bracing the first.

Izuku recognized the form. This is exactly the way that Toshinori had first taught him how to throw proper punches. He knew that All Might was asking him to punch him… and with One For All too!

"But Dad..." Izuku began nervously.

"Don't worry, son, I can handle it!" Toshinori said, grinning and waiting for Izuku to throw his punch.

Izuku stared at his father, but the smile did not waver. So he took his stance again, pulled up the electrical feeling of One For All, and threw a punch that landed right in All Might's waiting hand.

Just like before, One For All came with an explosion of power that actually pushed All Might back several meters. In all of his time watching All Might's fights online and even seeing a few of them up close in the past few years, he had never seen his father pushed back like that from any attack. For Izuku to have done it…

And Izuku's thoughts stopped because his world exploded in pain. He cried out, his left arm reaching around to grip his right on reflex, but that only caused more pain to shoot through is body. Izuku stared down at his right arm, discolored and hanging uselessly at his side. Broken.

"Oh dear… the both of you…?" Recovery Girl asked with a sigh.

Izuku looked up. He was shocked to see that not only had his father been pushed back several meters, but the hand that had caught Izuku's punch was broken as well. It was one thing for All Might to get pushed back, but quite another to have actually caused his father an injury!

"Dad!" Izuku screamed in shock.

"Don't worry. I'm fine." Toshinori said, though he hardly seemed to be bothered by it at all. Then again, his after his injury years ago, a broken hand was probably nothing. "I see… so the backlash is going to be a problem..."

"Dad! You're hurt! Are you okay!" Izuku had completely ignored his father, and was on the verge of a breakdown. But he was brought back down to earth by Recovery Girl taking a hold of his broken arm. He cried out in pain, but it stopped the freak out at least.

"Toshinori is fine. He's dealt with far worse before." She told Izuku. Recovery Girl still had nightmares sometimes about the day that All Might had fought against All For One, with a hole in his side and much of his internal organs strewn across the ground. She gave Izuku's arm a kiss and her quirk instantly began to heal his broken arm. Once Izuku's arm was healed, she quickly took care of Toshinori as well. Soon, they were both good as new, except Izuku seemed on the verge of falling over and falling asleep right there in the sand.

"Why am I suddenly so tired?" He asked, yawning.

"Recovery Girl's quirk speeds up the body's natural healing process, and healing takes stamina. You healed a broken arm instantly, so of course you are going to be tired." Toshinori said, also looking a little tired.

"Why… did you do that on purpose? Did you know that you would get hurt? Why would you do that?" Izuku asked.

"To make an important point." Toshinori answered. "You've always looked up to me, both as a hero and as a father. I knew that no matter how many times I told you that One For All grows each time it is passed on, you would not believe that you could be more powerful than I am. But you are more powerful than me now, my son. This is proof of that. A punch that strong would have even forced me back when I was in the prime of my strength, before my injury."

"I… whoa..." Izuku gasped. He had to admit… All Might was right about that. His father had told him many times before that One For All grew stronger as it was passed along, but before this moment he would have considered the thought of being stronger than All Might impossible. But he couldn't deny what he saw with his own eyes. Punching with all of his strength… he was more powerful than All Might!

"Now we have the next ten months to work on your control over your quirk. With those two punches, and for a while yet, your quirk is going to be all or nothing. But with practice and training, you will learn how to decrease how much strength you are using so you only use as much power as you need, or however much your body can handle with a single punch." Toshinori said. "But don't worry. We'll get it figured out..."


	15. Chapter 15

**LES: Looking at the reviews for last chapter, I think that more people than I expected are upset about the limits I put on Izuku. So I spent the weekend after posting the last chapter thinking about it a lot. I still want to keep limits on Izuku's power. That is not going to change. But I am willing to offer a compromise. I am willing to offer for your approval the increase of usefulness that Full Cowling will provide. This is not based on canon, since Full Cowling does not seem to increase Izuku's upper limit at using One For All at all. But I'm willing to change Full Cowling so it does increase Izuku's upper limit. I'm changing Full Cowling so that when Izuku spreads One For All around his whole body, it allows him to keep the power contained by each of his limbs at a safe level, but increases his total power output since now all of his limbs are holding the power. For example, the top amount of power that Izuku can use with a single arm would be about 15%. But by spreading out the power so each of his limbs is carrying 15%, his total power output would be 60%. And maybe a little bit more for his torso, so maybe like 65% total. And then I'll have Izuku limit himself by his desire to not kill anyone. I'll even offer something that seems to have been forgotten in canon… never turning off One For All. Using quirks a lot makes them stronger, so when Izuku makes the revelation about never turning off One For All, he'll mean it this time. That will make him even stronger and improve his quirk in a way that works in canon. I hope that this will make the people who were upset at the last chapter happier. But, sorry, Full Cowling is a couple chapters away, so Izuku is still making the mistake of focusing all his power in one limb and injuring himself just like in canon.**

 **Chapter 15**

* * *

Despite Izuku's promising start on the day that he first received One For All from his father, things had not gotten any easier. And, to be frank, Toshinori was almost completely at a loss.

They did not train together as often anymore. Toshinori was right in that Izuku needed to set aside some time for studying. After all, the practical exam was only a part of the entry exam into U.A. If you failed the written exam, it didn't matter how good you did on the practical. Your practical scores were not even considered for the students who failed the written portion of the exam. Izuku needed to put aside plenty of time to study as well.

But during the time that they can train together, Izuku was really struggling with controlling the quirk. It took several weeks for Izuku to learn how to lower the amount of power that he used with every usage of One For All, but once they got down to an amount that Izuku could use with no injury to himself, Toshinori estimated that he was only able to use about 15 percent of One For All. Toshinori would never say to Izuku, but he was a little shocked that the amount of One For All that his son could use was so small.

When Toshinori had received One For All from Nana, after a brief learning period that left his muscles sore, he was able to use 100 percent of One For All right away. He didn't really expect Izuku to be able to do that, since Nana had been incredibly shocked that he could, but he still thought that was pretty low considering how much effort Izuku had put into his training over the last several years.

Izuku was disappointed too. Toshinori had warned him that backlash would be a problem, but he could see the confusion in his father's eyes every time he tried to use more than 15 percent and ended up hurting himself.

But Izuku wasn't going to give up. He kept pushing himself, and kept injuring himself too. Several times he hurt himself so badly that Toshinori had to get him an emergency pass so that he could get past the U.A. barrier to go see Recovery Girl with his father.

And that is where he found himself now. He'd broken his arm on one of Toshinori's punching bags when he tried to force about 20 percent into his arm. The bag had been destroyed, but so had his arm.

A couple of the staff members looked on curiously as All Might led Izuku through to the nurse's office. None of them probably knew this boy All Might kept bringing to the nurse's office, nor why he kept coming here. But, none of the teachers stopped All Might. It was pretty clear that Izuku did have permission to be there from the principal, since he was able to make it past the U.A. barrier.

"Oh dear, again?" Recovery Girl sighed. He gestured for Izuku to sit on one of the beds and began to inspect his arm. "Broken again. This is the third time in as many weeks that you've come in with broken bones. I'm beginning to grow very concerned." She kissed his arm, and Izuku felt the relief of her healing quirk. It did leave him pretty tired, though. In fact, every time he got healed it seemed to leave him more and more tired than before. "I don't know as much about the former users of One For All as you do… did any of them have this much trouble with the quirk?"

Toshinori could do nothing but shrug helplessly. "I'm afraid I don't know much about any of the former users beyond my own teacher. She said that it took her a while to get used to the quirk, but I'm not sure how much of a struggle she had. And from what Nana had told me, the one who gave her One For All died very soon after giving her his power. He didn't really have the chance to tell her about former One For All users or how they handled getting the quirk."

"That's very unfortunate." Recovery Girl said. "But there's nothing we can do about it now. I suppose we'll just have to work with what we are given. You can use about 15 percent safely, isn't that right, Midoriya?"

"Yes, that's right." Izuku answered.

"Then the only advice I can give you is to know your limits. If 15 percent is your limit, you'll just have to live with that until you are able to strengthen your quirk the way that children normally strengthen their quirks." Recovery Girl said.

"And how is that done?"

"Quirks grow stronger naturally, over time, the more often they are used." Recovery Girl said. "Keep using your quirk at 15 percent. You will eventually grow stronger."

"That might not be so bad." Toshinori tried to tell Izuku. "Even with only 15 percent of One For All, you will still be much stronger than anyone unless they have a super strength quirk. You will still have no problem getting into U.A., whether you take my recommendation or you apply for the regular entrance exam."

"But it's not enough!" Izuku said. "I don't want to just get into U.A.! I want to become the Number One hero, just like you! I want to be the best!"

"I understand how you feel, son." Toshinori said, placing his hand on Izuku's head. "Trust me, I know. But Recovery Girl might be right. There could be a lot that I don't know about One For All. Perhaps sometimes it needs to develop like a quirk that you are born with."

"Ah, so this is your son?" A new voice asked. Both Toshinori and Izuku jumped in shock, and Toshinori coughed up some blood as well.

Standing in the doorway was, well… as had been said before, it was generally considered in poor taste to make assumptions or stare at people based on their appearance in a quirk-filled society. Izuku's first thought was that this was a person who had a quirk that made them look like an animal, but most of the time the person was still about the size of a human. This person was animal-like, but seemed only a little bit larger than a cat.

"Nezu, sir!" Toshinori gasped.

 _Nezu… that name sounds familiar…_ Izuku thought to himself, and then he realized. Nezu was the name of U.A.'s principal! His father had mentioned him a few times before. Whatever his quirk, Izuku had to make a good first impression if this was going to be his future principal.

"Good afternoon, sir!" Toshinori said.

"You know, All Might, when I gave you permission to bring your son on campus for medical treatment, I had no idea that he would end up being a more regular patient than you." Nezu said, turning his small, beady eyes on Izuku. Izuku couldn't help but notice the large scar across his right eye and wondered what had happened, but refused to ask. "Is something wrong with the boy? A chronic disease?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that, sir!" Toshinori said, kneeling down so that he was about as eye-level as he could get with the principal. Even kneeling down, Toshinori was much taller than the principal. "He's just having a little bit of trouble learning to control his quirk..."

"A fifteen year old boy should have plenty of control over his own quirk, at least enough control to avoid hurting himself unless his quirk requires him to hurt himself for some reason." Nezu said, turning a sharp gaze on All Might. "You've chosen your son as your successor after all. I doubt if I'll ever hear the end of it from Sir Nighteye now. I think he's had his heart set on a second year student he's taken to interning."

"How did you..." Toshinori began.

"I know about One For All, remember?" Nezu said. "You told me about it when you got your job here as a guest lecturer. And, now seeing a teenage boy struggling with basic control, mixed with the knowledge of a quirk that is passed on later in life rather than inherited at birth… it is a simple matter to put two and two together."

"As sharp as always, sir." Toshinori said.

Now Nezu turned his attention towards Izuku. "I would guess that you carry your mother's name instead of your father's, right?"

"That's right." Izuku answered. "My name is Midoriya Izuku."

"Very well, what seems to be the problem, Midoriya?" Nezu asked.

Izuku sighed and explained his issues with controlling One For All. About how he could only summon 15 percent of its full power at any time without causing injury to himself. And about how no one seemed to be able to tell where he was going wrong.

Nezu looked out the window thoughtfully, lost in thought. And then he turned back around to look at Izuku. "One For All is an incredibly special quirk, but we can never forget that it is still a quirk. It is fairly common for quirks to mutate and change a little as they are passed from one generation to the next. Perhaps One For All mutated when it was passed onto you?"

"I… suppose it is possible." Toshinori said thoughtfully. "I have no knowledge of One For All mutating, but as I've said before, the knowledge might have gotten lost when my master's master died."

"What you might need is information from someone who knew the former user of One For All even better than you did, Toshinori." Nezu said, and Izuku couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw an amused smirk cross Nezu's face. A second later, Izuku realized why Nezu was looking so amused.

Toshinori began to cough even more blood in shock, to the point where Recovery Girl felt the need to rush forward and use her quirk on him. Even when the blood flow stopped, he was left staring at Nezu in fear and shock. "You can't mean..."

"Goodness, All Might… you can't tell you that you are still afraid of Gran Torino after all these years?" Nezu said with a small laugh and smirk.

"I… I don't fear him!" Toshinori grumbled firmly, but the shaking in his legs told a different story.

"You need more information." Nezu said. "There is no one else alive who knew Shimura Nana as well as Gran Torino did, and he has experience teaching another One For All user… yourself."

"And I still have nightmares about it." Toshinori grumbled under his breath.

"You never know… Gran Torino may have some ideas about where young Midoriya is going wrong and how he could improve." Nezu said. "I want to hear that this boy has seen Gran Torino before your next lecture, All Might." Nezu gave the much taller hero a wink and strolled out of the nurse's office.

Toshinori sighed. "Ugh. You haven't changed much over all these years either, sir."

"Who is Gran Torino?" Izuku asked, looking over at his father.

Toshinori took a moment to shiver as the memories washed over him. And then he said: "After the woman who held One For All before me passed away, Gran Torino is the one who took over my training. So Nezu is right about that, at least. Gran Torino is the only person alive who has trained someone to use One For All, and he knew my former master very well. They were great friends before she ever met me. He… might have some ideas."

Izuku waited to ask his next question until they were outside of the U.A. building. A couple of the teachers waved goodbye to All Might as they left, but one of the teachers only gave them a curious glance before turning and walking away without acknowledging All Might at all. Izuku was kind of weirded out by that guy. All of the teachers and staff at U.A. were pro heroes, but he didn't recognize that teacher at all. Finally, when they were on the other side of the U.A. barrier, Izuku finally asked the question that had been on his mind since they left the nurse's office. "Why are you afraid of Gran Torino?"

Toshinori did not answer for a few seconds. "Because Gran Torino's main focus for my training was in combat. We had both seen my former master get murdered, so he was mostly interested in improving my combat abilities. He knew the sort of evil that I would be up against, so he did not hold back in those sparring matches at all. He used to hit me so hard that I rarely went a day without throwing up."

For a few minutes, they walked in silence before Izuku spoke again. "Why won't you do that?" He asked.

"Do what?" Toshinori asked.

"Spar with me… really spar with me." Izuku clarified. "You've had me learn the basics of a couple forms of martial arts, but I've never actually used any of those abilities in a fight."

"It's illegal for you to use your quirk in sparring before either being licensed or enrolled in an accredited heroics course." Toshinori said. "Since you couldn't use your quirk in a fight, I would not be able to either." He spread his arms wide to indicate his emaciated form. "And without being able to use my quirk, I could hardly be considered a decent sparring partner."

"Oh… that makes sense." Izuku said, sighing in frustration.

"But there is perhaps a solution. You would still be unable to use you quirk in that setting, but it would give you combat experience." Toshinori said. "There are plenty of martial arts dojos around. You could get sparring practice at any one of them."

* * *

 **LES: Be sure you waved to Eraserhead!**


	16. Chapter 16

**LES: I just want to give you guys a little notice. I've picked up a couple of extra hours of work at my job for the next several weeks. A couple of extra hours every Monday night. Every year we have to send our old records into storage. No one wants to do it (seriously, it March and everyone is still putting it off...), but it has to be done because it makes everyone's jobs easier, especially my own. So I volunteered the extra hours to get it done. I will still make every effort to get each chapter done on time every week, but if there is ever a week where the new chapter is not posted on Friday at midnight, it will definitely be finished before Sunday. My weekends are still totally free so I will definitely have the time to sit down and get each chapter done before Saturday is over. This might not effect the posting schedule at all. This is just to let you know that some chapters _may_ be a little late, but they _will_ still be posted every week. I'll try to let you guys know when this period is ended, if I remember. I can't give a definite answer yet because it's one of those "do it until it is finished" kinda jobs. I could be only a couple of weeks, or it could be a month or two.**

 **Chapter 16**

* * *

Principal Nezu had told All Might to have Izuku seen by Gran Torino before his next lecture, which did not give him a lot of time to procrastinate. But… procrastinate he did.

On the day before the deadline, Toshinori finally called Gran Torino and explained the situation to him, asking permission to visit with his son to help find where he was going wrong with using One For All. Gran Torino had taken a few minutes to berate Toshinori for never visiting him, but then gave him permission.

So Toshinori and Izuku took the bullet train a few towns over to where Gran Torino lived. Izuku knew that his father was nervous judging by the way his knee bounced all the way to their station. Nor did he stop fidgeting as they took the walk to Gran Torino's house.

When they finally arrived, Toshinori hesitated for just a few seconds too long before he knocked on the door. The door opened, and before anyone could say anything, a short old man stepped out of the door, planting his cane on Toshinori's foot. Izuku wanted to say something, but his father's fear of this man kept his mouth shut. Plus, a quick glance revealed that Toshinori was not in any real pain from Gran Torino's cane on his foot, it was more of an annoyance and an embarrassment that he had to endure. Despite carrying a cane, Gran Torino could probably move around just fine without a cane for short bursts, or at least long enough to keep his weight off it for the purpose of planting it on his former student's foot.

"Took you long enough to come visit me, Toshinori." Gran Torino said, removing his cane from Toshinori's foot and turned around to head back inside. "And I heard that you're only coming back because you are as lousy a teacher as you were a student."

Perhaps Toshinori longed to say something in return, but he simply set his jaw and followed Gran Torino inside the house, giving Izuku a small smile to let him know that it was okay. Izuku hesitated before following his father inside, sticking just behind Toshinori just in case.

Gran Torino was waiting for them in the living room, and clearly no longer interested in All Might. "Well, come around him, boy. I'm not going to hurt you." He said firmly.

Izuku quickly stepped around from behind his father. "Um. Hello, sir. My name is Midoriya Izuku."

"Midoriya is your mother, boy?" Gran Torino asked.

"Yes sir." Izuku answered.

"And how old are you?"

"Fifteen, sir."

Once again, Gran Torino turned his attention on Toshinori, who stood frozen. All Gran Torino did was glare at Toshinori and point to the ground in front of him. Toshinori no longer hesitated, and obviously knew what Gran Torino was asking of him. He stepped forward and knelt down in front of Gran Torino. The old man raised his cane and knocked Toshinori on top of the head with it. Once again, it was not nearly a bad enough hit to actually hurt Toshinori, even in his weak form.

"I suppose when I was teaching you to fight I should have been teaching you some common sense." Gran Torino muttered. "Barely more than a kid yourself, and off having kids."

Once again, Toshinori longed to speak in his own defense. He had been in his early twenties when Izuku had been born. A fair bit older than what one would call 'a kid.' But, then again, most older people seemed to think anyone under the age of fifty was a kid. Toshinori was probably _still_ a child to Gran Torino. "I was not a child… sir." Toshinori said softly.

"You are a child." Gran Torino said. "A child behaves irresponsibly."

For a few moments, Toshinori and Gran Torino just stared at each other flatly. And then Gran Torino said. "Young Midoriya, I have a plate of Taiyaki sitting on the table. Help yourself. Your father and I need to talk about something first."

"Oh, I don't really like sweets that..." Izuku began, but then trailed off when Gran Torino and Toshinori walked up the stairs. "Okay… never mind."

"I would appreciate that you don't speak like that in front of my son." Toshinori said.

"Look..." Gran Torino said. "I can understand, I suppose. You are the Number One hero, and have been for a long time. But you couldn't think to take precautions?"

Toshinori blushed deeply. "Oh… actually… I did take a..." He coughed nervously. " _permanent_ option after Izuku was born. And as for the night that Izuku was conceived..." Toshinori couldn't remember more from that night beyond a couple of hours. To look at Toshinori, one would think that through body size alone, he would have a high tolerance for alcohol, but he actually didn't. Mostly because he almost never drank, even before the loss of his stomach made drinking a bad idea. But that night had been a different story. A building had collapsed in Tokyo and All Might had not been able to arrive in time to save everyone due to the fact that he had _just_ arrived in Japan from America and not even All Might could get out of the airport quickly. He had arrived at the scene too late to save a great many people who had died waiting to be saved.

Just like any failure on his part, Toshinori had been absolutely devastated. So he had called his friend, Inko, and drank himself nearly into a coma. Inko had not perhaps drank as much as he did, but she was certainly not in her right mind either. Everything had blacked out and they were not in their right minds again until they woke up in Inko's bed together the next morning.

They had nervously laughed it off at the time, and tried to put it behind them… until Inko had found out that she was pregnant and they could no longer just ignore it.

"I… I know that I made a mistake." Toshinori admitted. "But… I don't regret that I have Izuku in my life now. And you have no right to make him feel awkward about that."

Gran Torino met Toshinori's angry gaze with a level look for several seconds before the older man's face turned into a bright smile. "I just needed to hear you take responsibility for your screw ups like an adult, Toshinori. Now, let's go see how you've managed to screw up your son's training." He turned and walked back down to the ground floor.

Toshinori just stared after him, confused. But, then again, Gran Torino was very good about keeping him off balance, and didn't seem to have lost that talent even all these years later.

Toshinori followed Gran Torino back down to the bottom floor where they found Izuku waiting for them. Toshinori glanced over at the plate of taiyaki and found it completely uneaten. Izuku was not a big fan of sweets.

"Well, boy, let's go see what's wrong." Gran Torino led Izuku through to an obviously thrown together gym. There was only a couple of basic weight machines, and so worn that they looked like rentals, and a punching bag.

"Now, from what Toshinori told me, you can handle about up to fifteen percent, is that correct?" Gran Torino asked, and Izuku nodded. "Well, that's good for now, but I would like you to try to keep it lower than that. This equipment is all stuff that I've rented and I'll have to pay for it if it is destroyed. Even the punching bag is rented."

"If anything happens, I'll pay for it." Toshinori volunteered.

"Even still. Keep it low, boy… lower than five percent." Gran Torino said.

Izuku nodded, and turned to face the punching bag. He activated One For All in his arm, and pushed it down as far as it could go, so that it was only slightly stronger than his inactivated quirk strength. He punched the punching bag, and nothing remarkable happened. He glanced at Gran Torino nervously.

"Well? Can't string two punches together, boy? What are you waiting for? Give the punching bag the old one-two." Gran Torino said.

"Oh! Sorry, sir!" Izuku said. He turned to face the punching bag again, allowed One For All to flow once again into his right arm, and then punched. Then, as quickly as he could, he switched the energy from his right arm to his left arm and punched again. But before he could punch a third time, he was stopped by Gran Torino's cane tapping on his leg.

"Why are your punches so slow?" Gran Torino asked. "It took two seconds for the second punch to follow the first."

"Oh..." Izuku began. "Well… it takes a little bit of time for me to change from using my right arm to my left."

"Change? What do you mean, change?" Gran Torino asked. Izuku could see behind Gran Torino Toshinori's eyes get wide from shock.

"Well..." Izuku began nervously. "It takes a little bit of time for me to stop using One For All in my right arm and move the energy into my left arm instead. Is… is that wrong?"

"You were quirkless before, right? So the thought probably didn't occur to you. However, _this zygote_..." Gran Torino jabbed his cane into Toshinori's right side, a little bit harder than the previous hits, enough to wind him a little. "has no excuse at all." He turned his attention on Toshinori. "Did you never have him throw two consecutive punches before?! Did you not explain to him how to properly use a strength enhancing quirk?!"

"I… I am fairly sure that I explained it..." Toshinori began nervously.

"Shut up. You obviously didn't explain well enough." Gran Torino said. "Now, listen carefully to me, boy. And ask questions if you don't understand. Human muscles and bones can only handle so much stress. One For All will help your body grow to help deal with the backlash of your own power, but only if you allow your muscles to grow used to that power. You are making two big mistakes. Your first mistake is that you are treating One For All like a special move, only 'activating' it when you are actually going into for the attack. But you should almost never or rarely turn off One For All. The more the energy is flowing through your body, the faster your body will grow used to it, and the more you will get out of your quirk. Who knows, after a year and a half… maybe two years, you should be able to use one hundred percent without a problem. And then by the time you graduate, you might learn how to push even greater than the average twenty five percent into your limbs and thus go beyond and surprise your enemies with a surprise boost of power. Your second problem is that you are focusing that energy into only a single part of your body. What happens if your foe survives or dodges your first punch? You'd be almost completely out of options. You need to spread One For All through your whole body. Bringing in the strength from all your limbs being able to use One For All at once will increase your total power output to about sixty percent, not to mention you'll get to enjoy the defensive, speed, and endurance boosts that One For All also provides."

"Gran Torino, I..." Toshinori began.

Gran Torino rounded on the pro hero. "How could you have overlooked something _so basic_?" And he rounded on Izuku again. "Boy, when Toshinori bulks up into his All Might form, does he do it one arm at a time, or does he bulk up his whole body?"

"I..." Izuku trailed off, feeling incredibly stupid. Of course he had always seen his father bulk up his whole body at once. How had he not realized? Izuku was pretty familiar with activating One For All, so it was just another step to filling his entire body with the energy of his quirk. Before he punched again, he remembered to push the energy down to a minimum. With the energy of One For All flowing through his body, now executing combos was easy. He would have to wait for another time to test out pushing himself up to his limit, but at least he was one the path to improvement.

"Thanks, Gran Torino! I..." Izuku began excitedly, and then trailed off, glancing in his father's direction. Toshinori was no longer saying anything, but he could tell from the look on his face that he was disappointed in himself for his failure to discover that Izuku had not been spreading the power through his body evenly. So Izuku walked over to his father. "Dad? I never told you what I was doing wrong either."

"I should have realized." Toshinori said simply.

Gran Torino laughed. "Ha! No, you wouldn't have. Because neither of you were really talking to each other. This whole thing could have been fixed if either of you had asked each other a couple of basic questions." He turned and gave a smile to Toshinori. "Be better."

"Y—Yes, sir!" Toshinori said.

"Now that that's worked out, let's go eat something. I'm starving." Gran Torino said.

"Um… perhaps I should make you something other than dessert?" Toshinori said.

Gran Torino glared at him. "And I see that you have not gotten any more fun either."

"I hardly even eat anymore and Izuku doesn't like sweets." Toshinori said.

"Doesn't like sweets?" Gran Torino demanded, staring at the two of them in shock. "How could a young boy not like sweets? I suppose that this is something else that I'll have to correct..." He said, walking back into the first floor with the kitchen.

Toshinori shrugged a little and followed after him to see if he could throw something more filling together for Izuku at least from Gran Torino's food supplies, but he suspected that he would find little more than more sweets and microwave food. But he stopped in the doorway when Izuku spoke up again.

"I'm sorry. I've embarrassed you in front of your teacher." Izuku said, his eyes firmly on the ground now. "If I had listened to you… paid attention better..."

"No. You haven't embarrassed me." Toshinori said firmly. "I have embarrassed myself. I should have realized where you were going wrong myself. Spreading the power through my body is so natural that I didn't even think about it."

"So that's how it works for you?" Izuku asked.

Toshinori paused thoughtfully. "Like I said, I don't really think about it that much. But I don't really spread it out evenly. Pretty much every single one of my moves involves punching, so a bit more than half of my total power is in my arms. But if I ever happen to find myself in a really bad place, my body is used enough to my power that I can put 100 percent in a single blow."

Now that Izuku knew that was how his father used One For All, that almost none of his punches were actually anywhere close to his strongest, he could hardly imagine what a single blow at 100 percent would look like! "Have you ever had to go that far against a foe? Like the guy who… injured you?" Izuku asked.

"No, I've never used that move against a person." Toshinori said. "Because I'm pretty sure that anyone who got hit with it would die in an instant." In fact, Toshinori had only used the "United States of Smash" a single time before it even had that name… in his third year at U.A. He had destroyed the robots he was facing with a single blow, along with most of the fake city he was fighting in. And he had failed that day's training because of his reckless move. It was far too powerful to use in almost any circumstance, both because of the fact that it was entirely lethal and could cause massive collateral damage to any surrounding area. "Now, let's go. Gran Torino is waiting for us."

Izuku nodded and followed Toshinori downstairs.

* * *

 **LES: I'm posting this chapter just a tad bit early because I'm not feeling very well and want to go to sleep. Enjoy the chapter an hour and a half early and good night, everyone!**


	17. Chapter 17

**LES: Happy MHA: Two Heroes Week!**

 **When I posted the last chapter, I was starting to get sick and it knocked me on my ass for the whole rest of the weekend. But… it gave me inspiration for this chapter, at least. So if a really bad stomach ache is what I need for inspiration… well… okay, but could it at least have been not so bad? Well… technically it's not really inspiration, because it is someone else's head canon that I saw on Tumblr. But I think the idea of quirk colds are too cute to not use at least once. Especially before Izuku starts at U.A.**

 **Chapter 17**

* * *

Sometimes it was strange what things had not changed when quirks became common place. When people with healing abilities first began to appear, many people began to think that this was the end of disease and illness as they knew it. But that was not to be the case. Healing was an extremely rare ability, and only about one in a hundred healers possessed the ability to heal anything besides physical injuries. Effecting germs, bacteria, and viruses was far too specialized for general healers, and there were far too many different illness causing organisms for even a specialized healer to treat. Sometimes they could treat bacteria, but that was about as far as treating organisms went. And one illness had gotten worse with the advent of quirks.

The flu virus.

The flu virus had always been a tricky thing to treat. It mutated so often and so rabidly that it really didn't matter how many vaccines people got, or how much immunity they had built up against the flu. There were still thousands of different strains to catch, and therefore impossible to protect against them all.

With a virus that mutates at the drop of a hat, it only took a few years for most of the virus strains to mutate for quirks. Thankfully, the quirk side effects were often not worse then the symptoms of the flu itself. It was certainly not fun to have the flu, but you were unlikely to have any negative outcome if you were otherwise healthy. The most common quirk symptom was an out of control quirk.

However… this was a slightly worse prospect for some than it was for others.

Izuku sneezed hard, and flinched as he felt One For All slip out of his grasp. It had been a couple of months since his lesson from Gran Torino and he had kept his quirk turned on at its lowest levels constantly since then, only shutting it down completely for physical education classes where quirk use was still not allowed. But he had shut it down completely now. Not that it had helped much.

His first cough had caused his ribs to break from the lack of control. It had been months since his last broken bone, so it had come as quite a shock. Thankfully, Toshinori recognized what was going on right away.

"You've got the flu or the common cold." Toshinori said. "Both illnesses have changed and now effect people's quirks when they catch them. Unfortunately, there's really nothing we can do except wait for you to get better. Shut off One For All completely for now, that should help the spikes in your power from reaching the point of breaking your bones… I hope."

Recovery Girl had healed his broken rib, but was unable to do anything to help him get over his flu except normal flu medication. Thankfully, shutting off One For All all the way had stopped Izuku from breaking more bones with every cough, but he was still liable to break anything he was holding in his hands, especially small household objects.

Thankfully, Izuku didn't have to suffer alone. Since he did not show up to school that day due to his illness, his friends made the trip to his house after school and their various clubs were let out. Schools had gotten a little more strict when it came to keeping children who caught quirk-effecting illnesses home. It was one thing for a child to force himself to come into school sick when he or she was only coughing or sneezing. It was quite another thing with uncontrolled quirk outbursts that could spread through an entire class. The last thing any school needed was for every single transformation and emitter style quirk to be going off at random every other moment in a classroom.

To Izuku's happiness, Yaoyorozu and Iida had shown up at Izuku's house. After all, the next couple of days were very important for them, and even a little thing like Izuku getting sick was not going to stop them from from talking about their futures.

All three of the friends had the option to get a recommendation into U.A from their parents, and the time frame to accept that recommendation was rapidly approaching.

To Izuku, it wasn't really a choice. His father had offered to recommend him to U.A., but Izuku wanted to really earn his place. Getting into U.A. based on recommendation came with a certain amount of prestige. But the recommendation really just meant that you had a pro hero relative who was willing to sponsor you, and it didn't really mean that you were a superior to the other applicants. And, numbers wise, it was actually easier to get into U.A. through recommendation. Going the normal way, your odds were about one for every 300 applicants. Going through recommendation lowered your odds to about one for every 4 applicants. Toshinori didn't even have to wait a day before Izuku had turned down the recommendation in favor of getting in through the normal exams.

Iida Tenya had chosen to go through the normal exams, while Yaoyorozu's parents were insisting that she try for the recommendation for the prestige.

"So, are you two worried?" Yaoyorozu asked, looking around at her two friends.

"A little." Izuku confessed. Toshinori had told him several times over even though he was not able to use One For All to its fullest potential, there was no reason why he should not be able to pass the practical exam with flying colors. But he still couldn't help but be a little nervous. He couldn't imagine what he would do if he failed to get into U.A. There was always the local public High School as a backup, but he really did not want to be forced to that. He wanted… _needed_ to get into U.A. "The closer we get to the exam, the more nervous I get." Izuku trailed off with a coughing fit. Once again, no broken bones and, thanks to the mask he was wearing, there was little chance of him passing the illness to his friends. However, his hands clenched in his sheets with the fabric ripped under his clenched fingers. After all, it was not like the fabric could handle even his normal strength like that. "Oops." Izuku muttered.

Iida stared at the ripped sheets for a moment. _Best Jeanist, maybe?_ He thought to himself. Just like everyone else, he was curious about who Midoriya's father was. He would not ask Izuku right out until he knew for sure what the young man's quirk was, but that didn't stop him from guessing. This was the first time Iida had ever known Izuku to have Quirk Flu, and therefore to not be in control of his quirk, so this was the very first time he had ever seen Izuku use an ability like a quirk at all. The damaged fabric of his sheets certainly did point to an out of control fabric control quirk, thus Iida's first theory about Best Jeanist being Izuku's father.

But then Iida realized that was probably not the case. He did not know a lot of things about Izuku's father, besides the fact that he is a pro hero and that Izuku's parents were not married; but he knew that Midoriya's father lived close enough to train his son on a regular basis. Best Jeanist was just a little too far away for that to be likely. So Izuku's father was definitely a hero within Tokyo city limits. Not that this information helped to narrow it down. There was a different hero agency on every block and literally hundreds of potential male heroes to be his father.

"Well, I certainly wish the two of you luck." Yaoyorozu said. "Both of my parents were recommended, and I'm pretty sure they would be disappointed in me if I went the normal route despite the odds being much better for me now."

"The number of applicants might be fewer, but you do know that you'll be facing off against the children of other high ranking pro heroes." Iida pointed out. "The normal tests are bloated every year with people coming in from all over to try their luck at getting into the number one hero program."

"And it's gotten even more competitive in the last few years since All Might became a part time teacher there." Yaoyorozu pointed out.

"Oh, yes!" Iida said enthusiastically. "I've heard that he lectures for the hero course students every couple of weeks! Do you think he lectures for all three years, or just for the third year students?"

"He lectures for all three years." Izuku answered. He tried very hard to make absolutely sure that he never gave away any information about All Might that could not be obtained by the public. It was pretty easy for the public to find out about what All Might did for the school, but if he gave away that he knew things like All Might's address or real name, that would raise red flags for any super hero fan.

"It is certainly an incredible opportunity!" Iida said. "To be able to learn heroics from the Number One hero himself! I can think of no higher honor!"

"Definitely!" Yaoyorozu agreed. "But have you two heard the latest rumors…?"

"What rumors?" Izuku asked, curiously.

"Well… please don't spread this information around. I overheard my father talking to one of my uncles, so that's the only reason I know. Rumor has it that the current heroics teacher at U.A. is retiring, and Principal Nezu is going to try to get All Might to join the staff as the full time heroics class teacher!"

For perhaps the first time in his life, Izuku had been thrown through the loop about something All Might related. _Dad never told me about any of this..._ Izuku thought to himself, thankful that he was able to hide his pensive expression behind his face mask.

"Wow… really?" Iida asked.

"Once again, I do have to stress that it's just a rumor that I overheard. From what I heard, it's pretty obvious that the heroics teacher is retiring, but there's no official word about who is taking over the post."

Of course, there had been rumors for a long time about the U.A. heroics teacher retiring soon. The teacher was far too old to be a pro hero anymore, and recently the teacher was even having trouble training his students. Hence all the guest lecturers, of which All Might was just one.

"Are… are either of you nervous?" Izuku asked.

His two friends glanced at him. "I think it would be kind of weird if we were not a little nervous." Yaoyorozu said, giving him a small smile. "I've been studying the molecular composition of everything I can in the past year or so, but sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night scared to death that the one object I'll need to pass the practical will be something I have overlooked."

About a year ago, Yaoyorozu had finally told her two friends what her quirk was: the ability to create any non-living material from the lipids of her body. The only downside of her quirk was that she couldn't create something if she didn't understand the molecular composition of the item she wanted to create.

"I'm a little nervous too." Iida said, pulling up his pant legs to reveal the mufflers protruding from his calves. Iida's quirk gave him super speed thanks to the engines in his legs. "It took me ages to decide that I wanted to go through the regular exam and I'm still worried that I might have made the wrong decision. Rumor has it that the recommendation exam is usually an obstacle race, while the regular exam is fights against faux villains. I wanted to show off my strength too, but I still worry that I might have been better off in the race where I could show off my strongest suit."

"You can still show off your speed in the regular exam." Izuku pointed out. "It is timed, after all."

"And you, Midoriya?" Iida asked. "You are the one who asked."

Unlike the others, Izuku still had not given either of them a hint as to what his quirk is. "I… am a little worried. I've had… a little bit of trouble controlling my quirk, and even now I can't use it at one hundred percent." He trailed off to cough a little. "My father says I'll be fine at my current level, but I still can't help but be a little worried that my best won't be good enough."

"How could that be? You've been training with your father almost constantly since I've known you." Yaoyorozu said, a little shocked.

"I… wasn't training my quirk that whole time. I needed to train my body first. That's what most of my training was for."

"You've trained the longest out of any of us." Iida said. "I'm sure that you'll be fine, even if you are not in one hundred percent control."

Izuku nodded, but he still couldn't help but think about the gaps that he saw in his own training. He had never before been in an actual fight, nor had he used his quirk on anything besides non-living objects. One thing worried him above all others as the entrance exam was weeks away: once he got into U.A., he would start having to use his quirk in training and sparring against the other students.

What if he hit too hard on accident because of his lack of experience with how much a human body could take? One single punch could put out about 15 percent of his total power, but what if 15 percent is lethal to humans? He had no idea. Killing another student in a spar, even by accident, would lead to his immediate expulsion and arrest for using his quirk to murder someone.

Toshinori's words came back to him. _"Humans can take a lot more punishment than you might think. I've had some criminals able to tank nearly half of my total power. If you are really worried about killing, keep the power output low and avoid hitting critical areas: the center of the chest, the head, the throat. Avoid those areas and you'll rarely have to worry about causing fatal damage."_

Well… ready or not… the exam was just a few weeks away. All Izuku could do now was focus on studying and hope that he had learned enough to get him through the entrance exam. Everything after that could wait until later.

* * *

 **END OF ACT II**


	18. Chapter 18

**LES: OMG you guys! Two Heroes was so good, and totally worth the wait! I even gave up my FFXIV gaming night to watch it, and Tuesday's patch was the final story patch before the new expansion coming in a few months, and it takes a lot for me to intentionally miss a story patch. Anyway, now we are on to the last and shortest act of this story. But, don't worry. The sequel to this story will soon follow. I will probably take a week off after this story is finished to recharge my batteries, but the sequel will soon be getting posted with just as much regularity as this story.**

 **ACT III: THE ENTRANCE EXAM**

 **Chapter 18**

* * *

It was pretty easy to see that everyone was at least a little bit nervous on the morning of the entrance exam. Midoriya Izuku stood just outside the main gateway of U.A. High, his entrance exam pass clutched tightly in his hands. Iida had said that he'd meet him outside the gates, and Izuku was expecting him within the next few minutes.

Iida always had a habit of showing up at least ten minutes before other people started showing up, hence why Izuku was there so early. At least… in part. He was mainly there early because he had been too nervous to just sit at home. He felt like he would explode if he had to stay home just one more minute, so he'd gotten to the school about half an hour before he was expecting Iida to show up.

And he was not the only early bird. Many other kids from middle schools all across Japan were milling around just outside the gates or just inside them in the campus' courtyard.

"Midoriya!" He heard a familiar voice calling to him. Izuku was glad to see that it was Iida running up to him. For a second, Izuku kind of wished that Yaoyorozu could be there as well, but the recommendation exam was going to take place a little later on in the afternoon. She was probably still at home getting in some last minute studying. "So… it's the big day. Are you nervous?"

"Is it that obvious?" Izuku asked. "I'm sure that I've done enough to prepare, at least for the practical… at least as much practice as I could with not having many options to practice using my quirk in combat."

"At least you'll know that everyone here is in the same exact boat that you are." Iida said. "None of us could use our quirks in combat either. And as for the written exam? I don't think you have to worry about that either."

"That's easy for you to say. You're the second highest ranked student in class." Izuku said with a fond smile at his friend.

"It's not like you are ranked that far behind me." Iida said. "You'll be fine."

Suddenly their conversation was interrupted. "Get outta my way, ya prep school nerds."

"Sorry, we..." Izuku began to say, turning to face the person who had interrupted their conversation when he felt his jaw drop open in shock. "Ka—Kacchan?!" Izuku gasped.

It had been years since Izuku had last seen Bakugou, but there was no mistaking the boy who now stood glaring at him. Izuku would never forget how he came to fear those red eyes. "Who the fuck do you think you are calling me something like that? I haven't been called that since..." Bakugou trailed off, glaring at Izuku. But if he came to recognize who he was, he gave no indication of it. Instead, his face only solidified into a frown. "Get outta my way."

Izuku quickly backed out of Bakugou's path. "Sorry." He said.

"Don't ever call me something like that again. I'm not interested in the past. Only the future where I'll be the Number One hero." Bakugou said. Bakugou started to walk past them, and then stopped. "You're obviously Deku." He said. It had been so long since anyone had called him by that name he almost didn't recognize it as his shameful old childhood nickname. "I don't know what you're doing here. But you should leave before you embarrass yourself." And with that, Bakugou paid them no more attention and began to walk up to the school's front doors.

"That boy was very unpleasant." Iida commented. "Do you know him?"

"From a lifetime ago." Izuku answered. "From before I moved to Tokyo. He was my old bully from my class in Musutafu."

"Bully is right." Iida agreed. "You shouldn't go around just calling people useless."

"Well… I suppose it's only fair since I accidentally called him by his old childhood nickname." Izuku said. "Old habits die hard, I guess. I never really knew him as anything other than Kacchan back then. Guess I'll have to get used to calling him Bakugou from now on."

"Bakugou? Wait… I think I've heard that name before. Wasn't he that kid who got caught up in a villain attack about a year ago?" Iida asked, and then paused thoughtfully. "Yes, I'm almost sure that was the name of the kid."

"I don't think I heard of that." Izuku commented.

"From what I heard, some villain tried to take over his body, and he had to fight the villain off by himself for several minutes while the heroes had to wait for a hero with a proper quirk to show up. Eventually, someone did show up, but the kid almost died and caused a lot of property damage with his explosion quirk."

"That's him, all right." Izuku said. "I guess that means he has more experience using his quirk in combat than any of us. Even as kids, he was really good at using his quirk against others."

Iida stared at Izuku. He had an inkling that Izuku really meant that Bakugou had used his quirk on _him_ while bullying him. But he didn't want to press Izuku for answers. He had long ago learned that it was impossible to get straight answers out of Izuku if he was careful about it.

"Are you… coming in?" Iida asked.

"Go ahead. I'll be there in a minute." Izuku said.

Iida nodded and turned to walk up to the school entrance.

Izuku contented himself just to stand and people watch for a couple of moments. Izuku couldn't even begin to guess the number of middle schools that were being represented by the students coming for the exam.

Most of the other teens seemed to come from other private middle schools just like Izuku did. But he could see scattered teens from public schools as well. A couple of minutes past and Izuku knew that he had to go inside now or he'd be late. So he turned to head inside…

And almost immediately tripped on his own feet.

He flared up One For All, trying to catch himself, but he was not quite fast enough. He was just beginning to accept the fact that he was going to eat concrete in front of everyone in the courtyard when his fall was suddenly stopped.

"That was close." A female voice said.

It was only then that Izuku realized that not only had his fall been stopped, but he was actually floating in midair! Before he could do any more than let out a gasp of shock and amazement, the girl placed her hands on his shoulders, gently guiding him back upright. She then pressed the pads of her fingers together while whispering "Release." All at once, gravity began to effect Izuku once more, and he was standing firmly on his feet again. "I'm sorry I used my quirk on you without permission. But it's bad luck to trip on yourself."

"Oh… oh! It's no problem at all! Thank you for stopping my fall." Izuku said. "That's… a really amazing quirk you have. Is it telekinesis? My mother has a very minor..." He trailed off, realizing that he was going to start rambling, and also realizing that he had only minutes to get inside or risk being late. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to start rambling. Thank you for saving me! And good luck to you!" Izuku said, waving and turning to run inside.

"And to you as well!" The girl called after him.

* * *

As they went inside, all of the students were given their test cards, which gave them a temporary ID number, and also listed which battle ground was to be the location of their practical exam. All of the students were seated inside the auditorium by their ID number, which grouped each middle school together. Izuku and Iida were joined by a few others from their school, and Izuku glanced around until he saw Ka… Bakugou. There were no other students around him wearing the same uniform. He was the only student from his middle school applying to U.A. That was pretty common from lower ranked middle schools. Only their topped ranked students would have a chance.

Once all of the students were seated, the lights dimmed and one of the U.A. teachers stepped onto the stage. Present Mic was a pretty easy choice. All of the teachers were pro heroes, but a majority of them were in it for the work and not the celebrity. So it made sense for the master of ceremonies to be the one U.A. teacher who thrived on attention.

Even still, it was a mismatch. Most of the students were too nervous or too focused to respond to Present Mic's call and responses. After a few seconds of failing to pump up the students, Present Mic decided to get down to business.

"I know it's all very boring, but the first couple of hours is going to be dedicated to the written portion of the entrance exam, which will be passed out in a couple of minutes. Once you are done with the written portion, please remain quiet in your seats for the test to be over. Once the boring part is done, the fun part will begin. The practical." Present Mic grinned maniacally. "I'm sure that you've all read the print out the school sent you. Once you are done here, change into the gym clothes you were asked to bring with you and then you should all follow the signs to the bus that will take you to your designated battle center, which is printed on your card."

"Which center are you going to?" Izuku asked Iida quietly.

"Battle center C." Iida hissed at Izuku under his breath. Izuku had heard that tone plenty of times before. It was Iida's nice way of telling him to shut up.

 _I'm in Battle Center B._ Izuku thought to himself. _Maybe they are trying to split up students who came from the same Middle School?_

"Here's how the practical will go down. Each battle center will hold a ten minute mock battle with robotic faux villains. Each villain will be worth a certain number of points depending on how difficult the villain is. Your goal is to shred as many of those villains as you can in the time allotted like a mid-song guitar solo!" Present Mic said. As he spoke, graphics began to play on the screen behind him, giving the students a visual representation of what they were meant to be doing.

But as the graphics began to show the silhouettes of the faux villains, Iida raised his hand besides Izuku. "Excuse me, sir?"

"Yes, Examinee Number 7111?"

"With all due respect, the printout we were given shows four types of faux villains." Iida said, holding up the printout to show the fourth villain type printed alongside the other three. "If this is an error on official U.A. material it is shameful. We are exemplary students and expect only the best from Japan's top school."

"Very good, Examinee Number 7111, thank you for calling in with your request. The fourth villain type is actually not worth any points at all!" Present Mic gestured to the screen behind him, which now showed a silhouette of the new villain. Above it appeared the number and letter "0P." "Think of that bad boy as an obstacle that should be avoided. Every battle center has this obstacle. It's not that it can't be beaten, but there's… kinda no point. I suggest that my loyal listeners just ignore that one and focus on the faux villains topping the charts!"

"Thank you, sir. I apologize for the interruption." Iida said, giving a short bow before taking his seat again.

"No trouble, young listener!" Present Mic said, pointing at Iida and winking with a large smile. "Now, if there are any more questions..." Present Mic paused. A couple of the students were whispering to their friends, but none of them seemed to have questions for Present Mic. "Before we start, how about I give all of you a taste of our school motto? As the general Napoleon Bonaparte once said: 'True heroism consists in being superior to the ills of life.' Go beyond! Plus Ultra!" Present Mic held up the stack of written exams. "Your written test starts now, but I hope that you've been hitting more than books!"

* * *

At the end of the written exam, Izuku was relatively sure of himself. Most of the questions were ones that he knew the answers to, and the rest he was able to make relatively good educated guesses. All of the students took five minutes to change into gym clothes before heading to the bus.

Before he stepped onto the bus, he gave Iida one last good luck, and then boarded the bus along with the rest of the young teens headed off to Battle Center B.

It was only a short drive to the Battle Center and Izuku unloaded along with everyone else.

"Okay… okay… calm down." Izuku muttered to himself. "You've worked for this for years. You've done as much as you possibly can. You've got this." He slapped his own cheeks to get his head back in the game. It was almost time.

* * *

 **LES: And play out the chapter with "Heroes" by Brian the Sun. And now, you'll have to excuse me while I go mourn the loss of the "I spoke to a girl!" scene. But, with Izuku being friends with Yaomomo… it had to go.**


	19. Chapter 19

**LES: Good evening my lovely readers! I know we are all excited to have the practical entrance exam right now, but before we do, I kinda need some advice. There's an aspect of this story coming up that I'm really flip-flopping on, and just want some advice. And that has to do with Izuku's chosen hero name: Deku, and whether or not he's going to want to chose that as his hero name.**

 **There are good arguments and also downsides going either way. Most days, I lean towards the fact that he has not used that name in several years, has little to no attachment to it, and is slightly more assertive… maybe even enough to tell Bakugou "No, I don't want you calling me that." Downside to this is that I'll have to come up with an alternative hero name… and I'm not afraid to admit that I SUCK at coming up with names.**

 **The alternative is keeping the name Deku. The downside are the things that I mentioned previously. But the upside is that there is a certain amount of value to the idea of reclaiming an insult for yourself. Not to mention being able to continue not subjecting you all with how crap I am at coming up with names.**

 **And if I do decide to do away with the Deku hero name, I have to come up with a good replacement. My immediate idea is to follow the footsteps of the original Japanese version of the anime. When Uraraka points out the phonetic similarities of the word "Deku" with the Japanese phrase meaning "You can do it!" or translated another way… "You got this!" I… think it's "Dekuru". So maybe Dekuru as a replacement hero name?**

 **Anyway, any advice that you might have for me will be greatly welcome! But that is many weeks and a whole other story away! Let's get to the main event! The practical entrance exam!**

 **Chapter 19**

* * *

A quick glance around at the other hopefuls revealed a group of about two dozen young teens who seemed on the outside to be more confident than Izuku felt. Maybe that was because they had all had their quirks for many more years than Izuku had to learn his. It took several moments of deep breathing for Izuku to feel like he could fake confidence as well as they could.

He could tell that everyone was sizing each other up, but Izuku could have no way of knowing what the others thought of them.

Truthfully, to the other examinees, the only thing that really stood out about Izuku was his above average height for a fifteen year old. There were probably only two other hopefuls in their group who might have stood taller than Izuku. His gym clothes were a little too good about hiding how muscular he was.

Izuku looked around, and to his shock, he spotted the same girl that had stopped him from tripping over himself in front of the school. In that moment, he realized that he never took a moment to introduce himself to her. He had just started rambling on about her quirk and then rushed off.

Thinking that it would be rude not to say something, he began to take a few steps towards her before he faltered. She was one of the only examinees who looked as nervous as Izuku felt. Her eyes were closed, her hands clasped to her chest as she took deep calming breaths. _I should leave her be._ Izuku realized. _I could always properly say hi to her afterwards…_

Without any of the examinees noticing, the large doors to the battle center opened up with surprisingly little noise. After a few seconds, the loud voice of Present Mic suddenly yelled down at them from above. "Go! Go! Go! In real battles, there are no countdowns! What are you doing, listeners? You're wasting air time!"

For a few seconds, everyone just stood in shock, and then almost as one, everyone rushed into the battle center.

 _Okay… what first?_ Izuku thought to himself as he trailed slightly behind the others. The way Izuku could see it, he had two options. The first was that he could rush into the center of the battle zone. That would probably be where the most enemies were, but a majority of the other test takers were sure to rush that way. Or he could head more towards the outskirts. There would probably be fewer enemies, but far less competition.

His decision was made pretty much for him when he saw that a vast majority of the other examinees were rushing straight towards the center. So, at the next intersection, Izuku took a sharp turn and rushed away from where the others had gone. There would be far too much competition at the battle zone's center, even with the increased amount of foes, for rushing in to make sense.

For the first time in a long time, Izuku allowed One For All to flow through him at the highest level that he could handle. When he first got One For All, he'd been able to handle 15 percent in a single hit. Now that limit had been increased to 20 percent. His speed picked up and the buildings began to fly past in a blur.

Suddenly, one of the robotic foes rushed out from an alleyway. Izuku slid to a stop as the robot turned to face him with an ominous "Locked on target." It was a one pointer. The easiest one, and Izuku was glad for that. An easy target to face to get rid of his nerves. He clenched his fist, making absolutely sure that the power in his right arm was at a safe 20 percent before he leapt forward and smashed his fist into the robot. 20 percent was obviously more than enough to utterly destroy the one pointer, because it shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.

Izuku took a moment to stare in shock at the mess he'd made of the robot. This was just the boost in confidence that he needed. Clenching his fist once more, he resumed his run down the street. Before long, he found a small group of robots, all with mixed point values. Izuku did not have the time to stop and count them up before they all targeted him.

Thanks to Gran Torino's advice, Izuku didn't have a problem dealing with this group thanks to being able to pull off combos. With that group destroyed, he now had only a vague idea of how many points he might have, but that didn't matter. Izuku realized that trying to keep track of his own points would just be a waste of time. They only had ten minutes, so he didn't have time to be counting every single one of the enemies that he took down.

Izuku ran around the outside of the arena, taking turns at random and destroying all of the robots that he came across without mercy. Only the three pointers could cause him any amount of trouble if he messed up his aim and hit some part of their bodies that were not vital. Losing an arm or part of their chassis did not slow them down, so Izuku learned very fast that he had to destroy either the torso or the head for the three pointers.

After a few more twists and turns, and taking out a couple more robots, Izuku suddenly found himself in the fray of the battle. As he expected, there was more kill stealing going on with the main battle group than was smart. Not to mention that he heard people calling out their scores to each other.

 _Nothing I can do here._ Izuku thought to himself, before turning to head down a direction that he thought he had not gone yet when it seemed like the entire world suddenly exploded around them. Everyone stopped fighting when one of the buildings suddenly imploded, collapsing in on itself.

Before the smoke and dust had cleared from the collapsed building, everyone heard Present Mic yell "Less than two minutes remaining!"

But no one was moving, because the dust had cleared and revealed… "Shit." Izuku whispered to himself, cursing in English like his father did on occasion.

It was the zero pointer. Present Mic had said that it was just an obstacle or a distraction, something to be avoided, but this robot seemed a bit much. None of the other robots were more than three meters tall. The zero pointer robot had to be at least 20 to 25 meters tall!

 _Okay… there's no way that I could take that thing on with just 20 percent power._ Izuku thought to himself. Probably nothing less than a bone-shattering 100 percent power would be enough to stop that monster. But, lucky for him, it was not like he was expected to take it on.

Many of the other examinees were all ready running away from the zero pointer as fast as they could, scattering in all directions. _I need to get out of here too._ Izuku turned to run away when a sound caught his ears.

"Ow!"

Izuku froze in his tracks. The sound had come from behind, right in the path of the enormous zero pointer. He turned around and saw a horrific sight. The nice girl… apparently she had been too close to the building when it had imploded and had gotten trapped under some rubble. She was trying to pull herself free, but it looked like both of her legs were stuck and it would take many seconds for her to pull herself free. And those were seconds that she did not have.

The zero pointer was moving down the street on its enormous treads, and there was a chance that the nice girl would be crushed under those treads if the zero pointer did not stop or change direction.

Was the zero pointer programmed to do something like that? Would it even be aware of the girl's presence? These were questions that Izuku did not have the time to answer, nor did the answers even matter to him in the end. If he did nothing, and the robot did not stop its course, the girl would die. There was nothing to think about. All that mattered was action.

There was no time to think about power regulation, nor any time to think about the repercussions against his body. There was no time to worry about if he had gotten enough points to ruin his body with two minutes of time to go. All of his power went into his legs for a mighty jump, and he launched himself like a missile up towards the zero pointer's head. Just like the three pointers, that would be one of it's vulnerable spots. He felt both of his legs shatter from the force of the jump, but that didn't matter. He was airborne and right on target.

As quickly as he could, he transferred that power from his broken legs to his right arm. A full power smash would hopefully be enough to take down this foe, because if it wasn't, the girl would die. Izuku clenched his fist, drew back his arm…

"SMASH!" Izuku screamed, throwing his fist forward with all the power he had received from his father and his fist made contact with the metal chassis of the robot's head.

There was an explosion of sound, like a bomb had just gone off, and the front of the robot's head caved in as it was knocked back and over. The entire robot was compromised and starting to explode from the inside. But, most importantly, it had stopped moving forward, and it would not crush that girl. She was safe.

Izuku only had a couple of moments to feel a sense of relief before his upward momentum ceased and gravity took hold of him once again, pulling him back towards earth. It was only in that moment that he realized what trouble he was in. Both of his legs were broken, as well as his right arm. In his haste to save the girl, he had pushed himself far past his limit and broken his body. And now he literally didn't have a leg to land on.

There was very little time to think. His father had told him that One For All could increase his durability as well as his strength. Perhaps that was his only chance of survival. To flood his body passively with One For All in order to increase his durability. It was not much of a plan, but it was the only one he had.

He flooded his body with One For All, all of his power, evenly through his whole body. He had never tried to use One For All defensively like this before, so he couldn't be sure if there would be a backlash injury or not. But that didn't matter. He was all ready injured and if he didn't do something he would die.

The ground was rapidly approaching and Izuku shut his eyes to prepare himself for the impact when he felt a pain that he was not expecting at all. He had been expecting pain to shoot through his entire body, not a feeling like someone had just slapped him. But that's kind of what it was like, like someone had slapped him before he hit the ground.

Izuku cried out in pain briefly before he realized that he had not hit the ground at all. He was floating gently less than half a meter off the ground. He looked around, shocked. It was the nice girl! She was laying on top of a piece of a three pointer robot which was floating in midair. Her face was screwed up with strain and concentration. And then, after a few seconds, she pressed her fingers together and whispered in a strained voice, "Release."

Izuku was lowered the rest of the way to the ground, grunting a little in pain as his broken limbs landed on the wrong angle. The piece of metal that the girl was floating on also came crashing down to the ground. The girl let out a shaky breath before she started to retch a couple of times. She vomited on the ground.

But Izuku wasn't paying attention to her. Other than being sick, she seemed to be all right. He couldn't see any sort of injuries on her, so he figured that she would be fine. So now he could think about his own predicament. There was less than a minute left, and he was no longer in a position to gain any more points, while all the others would surely be out there continuing to gain points to up their scores.

He had broken himself to take out an enemy worth zero points. But, at the same time, he couldn't regret what happened. He never would have been able to forgive himself if he allowed someone to die for the sake of an exam… especially for the sake of an exam!

He could only lay there in silent pain while the rest of the time ran out. Present Mic screamed in the distance that the test was over.

"Why?" A soft voice asked. Izuku pushed his head up off the ground to look at the nice girl. She was staring at him, confused. "Why did you do that? You've hurt yourself so badly, and took yourself out of commission for the entire end of the exam… for me?"

"I..." Izuku answered. "I couldn't stand there and watch someone die." And it was the absolute truth.

He lowered his head back to the ground, hiding his face from view so that tears could silently fall without anyone knowing. Some of the other examinees were walking over, some staring at the ruins of the zero point robot in shock, while others were staring at the fallen Izuku with equal shock.

"That was amazing." One of the teens said. "He just took out that zero pointer with one punch."

"Yeah, but at what cost?" One of his peers said. "Just look at the state of him. His legs and one arm is broken for sure."

"He did it to save the girl. I saw him start to run away but then go back when he saw she was trapped."

Their discussion was cut off by the sound of a voice that Izuku was very familiar with: Recovery Girl. "Good job. Good job, all of you! You are all heroes in my eyes!"

Izuku quickly turned his head to wipe his tears off on his sleeve before Recovery Girl made her way to him. "Oh dear… it looks like you've overdone it, sonny." She said, recognizing Izuku immediately.

"I'm sorry." Izuku whispered.

"I'll have to give you a full dose of healing power this time. Make sure you go right to sleep when you get home to help your recovery." Recovery Girl told him. She leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of his head, much to the shock of all the other teens.

"Um… what's she doing?" One boy asked.

"You're watching a school nurse at work." Another boy answered with a French accent. That was a little odd, but U.A. was no stranger to international students. There were always a few students from other countries every year. "The Youthful Heroine, Recovery Girl. Her quirk is a tré awesome boost of healing power. Look." Izuku could feel Recovery Girl's quirk working on him, twisting his limbs and bones around into proper alignment. "She's saving him months of recovery time."

But the stamina drain was too much for Izuku. He had never had to heal three broken limbs before. And he immediately passed out from the stamina drain and remembered no more until he woke up the next morning in his own bed.

* * *

(Several Minutes Earlier, The Battle Center Control Room)

Toshinori could help but grin proudly at the pandemonium that filled the control room, as most of the other teachers from U.A. stood up and cheered in amazement. Even Principal Nezu was standing up on his seat, cheering with his paws raised in the air.

Out of all the battle centers they were watching, only one examinee had turned back to face the massive zero pointer.

Toshinori had been keeping an eye on Izuku as much as he possibly could, and he knew that it was a good thing that Principal Nezu had asked All Might to recuse himself from the selection process because of Izuku's presence in the test because Toshinori had not been able to stop watching his son. Sure, there was much room for improvement, but that did not surprise Toshinori at all. Because of the law, he had not been able to train Izuku properly for combat. But he had done just as well as he could have hoped, and exceeded all his expectations when it came to the zero pointer.

When it appeared, every single examinee had taken one look at it and turned and fled. It was not a mark against their courage. Every hero knew the value of a tactical retreat when there was no hope of winning a battle.

But the situation had changed entirely when one of the young women had gotten herself trapped in the rubble in the path of the zero pointer. Power Loader was at the control panel for the robots, and he immediately sent the order for that particular zero pointer to stop within a safe distance as to not crush her on accident. But none of the students could know that she wasn't in danger. For the next few seconds before the robot would come to a stop, that girl had to be terrified that she was going to get crushed. Toshinori had seen that look of fear on many a scared civilian. But he had also seen the look of grim determination that his son now wore.

Without hesitation, Izuku had turned around and rushed the zero pointer, probably flooding his body with the full extent of One For All in order to take on that robot. It would mess up his body, but Toshinori knew he had done it without hesitation to save that girl's life.

Every single teacher at U.A. was also a pro hero, and every single one of them had at one time found themselves in a position exactly like Izuku. Facing a massive villain that they knew they had little chance of beating and starting to retreat… but then turning back when they realized that the situation had changed. Innocent people's lives were at risk. The obvious choice was no longer fleeing. The only choice was to stand your ground against a superior foe and do every possible thing you could to protect the innocent, even if the cost of doing so was your life.

Toshinori felt worried for his son as he began to fall, but the girl that he had saved now saved him in return, getting him to the ground safely with her quirk. The teachers were hardly paying attention during the last minute of the test.

The sickly man couldn't help but feel pride when the other teachers began clapping him on the shoulder telling him how impressive his son was, and how bright his future looked since he was lucky enough to have inherited All Might's own impressive strength.

"Young Midoriya is going to get a lot of rescue points for that move." Nezu commented. "We can't know what his written score and villain point score is at this time, but I believe he has certainly done well enough to have earned his place at our school. You must be very proud, All Might."

"I am." Toshinori replied.

In the background, in the shadows, a man with dark circles under his eyes watched the screen impassively. The move had been flashy, sure, just as he'd except from the son of a hero like All Might. But did no one else see just how badly the boy had ended up hurting himself? How could a person with a super strength quirk have made it all the way to fifteen years old and still be at the point where their own power hurt them with backlash? There was only one explanation…

All Might's son was lazy. He knew that he had this incredible power that he had inherited from his famous father, and thought that he could coast by without putting in the hard work to master his own power.

If All Might's son had passed the written portion of the exam, he was going to get into U.A. But, if he found out that the boy was a lazy teenager simply riding on the coat tails of his famous father, he would expel him without remorse on Day One.

* * *

 **LES: #LetIzukuSwear**

 **No, I don't think that Izuku would swear like Bakugou. But he has a different life than in canon. He has Toshinori as a father, and he swears. Toshinori _never_ swears in his All Might form, because that does not work for his image. However, he does swear in private. He also tends to swear in English, reducing the risk of someone becoming offended if he is overheard. Izuku picked this up from him. Izuku knows there is a time and a place for swearing, rarely does so in public and then it is mostly a swear word muttered under his breath. Like Toshinori, he also swears in English.**


	20. Chapter 20

**LES: All of the advice is in, and the results are totally unanimous! Izuku will completely ditch the name "Deku". There were a couple of suggestions for replacement hero names for Izuku, but the vast majority of people expressed contentment with replacing Deku with Dekiru. (Thanks to everyone for pointing out my misspelling!) So that's what I'll go with. Now watch as I screw up and definitely end up writing Deku on accident at some point in the future… People were also okay with #LetIzukuSwear!**

 **The very first time I watched the anime, I thought that the school had just lied about the zero pointer being worth zero points, and that was how Izuku was going to pass. That's why Yaomomo suggests that to a worried Izuku.**

 **Chapter 20**

* * *

In the aftermath of the entrance exam, Izuku couldn't help but be nervous. He had woken up in his own bed the next day with his mother watching over him. "Has… has dad sent any word?" He asked his mother.

Inko took a moment to sigh with relief when her son woke up. She wished she could give Izuku the information he wanted, but she had even less information than he did. Toshinori had returned Izuku to her last night, unconscious from Recovery Girl's treatment, and had not given Inko any indication about how Izuku did.

"The written tests have not been scored yet, and the U.A. teachers will need about a week to go over all the footage for every single participant before the final scores are released." Toshinori had told her briefly. "If I can, I'll be back in a week to let Izuku know if he has passed or not."

Toshinori was telling the truth. He had no idea if Izuku had passed. Judging sorely by the practical, he had made it in. But there was the written test to consider. If Izuku failed that, he was out no matter what his score for the practical. The staff would go over the recommendation tests the following day, and then go over the regular tests over the following week.

It killed Toshinori to leave before making sure that Izuku woke up, but the school needed him for the recommendation students. He had no say for the regular test due to Izuku's presence among the hopefuls, but they still wanted his opinion for the recommendation students.

"I'm afraid your father didn't say anything." Inko told her son. "He just said that they'll have your scores within a week and he would be back to let you know how you've done. But, Izuku… no matter what, I am _so_ proud of you." Inko said with a smile.

* * *

Over the next week, Inko could do little besides watch as her son worried himself sick over the results for U.A. And she could hardly blame him since he had no back up school. Most students who applied for high end private schools like U.A. also applied to a back up public high school. Izuku had not done that. He was going to go to U.A. and he had been absolutely sure of that.

However, after the fact, Izuku was left wondering if he hadn't made a mistake. For the first seven minutes of the test, he felt like he had performed pretty well. But attacking the zero pointer had left him completely unable to get any points for the remainder of the test, unlike nearly everyone else.

It was all he could think about. He could not even concentrate on his work outs anymore, and those had become second nature over the last several years. In his distraction, he was now basically just doing the bare minimum, not unlike he had been doing when he first started training with his father.

Within about five days, Izuku had gotten an excited text from Momo saying that she had been accepted into U.A. Izuku had immediately called Momo to congratulate her on her acceptance.

"Have you gotten word about your scores yet?"

"No, not yet. I am a little worried, though..." Izuku said.

"Why? What's wrong?" Yaoyorozu asked.

"I think… I messed up in the practical exam." Izuku confessed. "We had a ten minute mock battle, and I overextended myself and took myself out of commission for the last couple minutes of the battle."

"How were you doing before that?" Yaoyorozu asked.

"I suppose I was doing okay." Izuku said. "But the acceptance rate is so low and I wasted whole minutes of my time when almost everyone else was increasing their score."

"What exactly happened?" Yaoyorozu asked.

"We had to fight robots. At the end of the fight they unleashed a massive robot into the arena. There was a girl. She got trapped under some rubble and was about to get crushed by the robot. So I attacked the giant robot."

"You what?" Yaoyorozu asked, shocked.

"But it was at too great a cost. I'm glad that I leapt in to save her, but breaking my legs and arm to do it cost me the rest of the battle."

"How big was the robot?"

"About 20… 25 meters." Izuku answered.

For a few seconds, Yaoyorozu did not say anything, because all she could think about was her friend being able to take on a robot that massive. "And you took on this robot alone? No one else stopped to help?"

"No." Izuku answered. "I was by myself. Everyone else fled at the sight of it because it was worth zero points."

"But why would they have something like that in the test?" Yaoyorozu asked. "To show that you know how to run away? That seems highly unlikely. Do you think they might have lied about the giant robot being worth only zero points? I can't see how you won't get some sort of reward for taking on such a massive foe by yourself." _He must have an extremely powerful quirk._ Yaoyorozu thought to herself. She had always thought that he had a pretty highly rated father. But with a quirk powerful enough to take on a robot foe that big by himself, even if he hurt himself in the process, his father had to be incredibly powerful too. Top 10 hero… maybe even Top 5!

"Do you… really think that U.A. would lie about something that important?" Izuku asked.

"Well… you were the only person who turned back to attack this massive robot." Yaoyorozu said. "I think that proves how brave you are."

He trusted Yaoyorozu and knew that she was much smarter than him. She was also very good at working out people's true motivations. That came naturally from years of people just trying to be her friend because of her wealth or who her parents are. A part of him thought that she might be right, but he was too worried to believe that he had actually managed to pass with his performance in the practical test.

* * *

Compiling the scores at U.A. was happening at a decent pace. To get all of the scores, they pulled up each student's ID number in order and used the cameras placed all over the testing area to follow that student, making a mark of every 'kill' that student made, while a group of impartial pro heroes watched to award rescue points to that student.

Toshinori made absolutely sure that he was in the room while they were scoring Izuku. He was absolutely not allowed to be involved with keeping track of the villain points or to be among the pro heroes awarding rescue points, but he had to be there at least.

Before taking down the zero pointer robot, Izuku had gotten a respectable 36 points. It was by no means the highest number of villain points awarded to the students. Going to the edges of the battle zone had lowered the amount of robots that he encountered. But then came the zero pointer. After the zero pointer was taken down on the screen, the group of pro heroes began to talk among themselves about the rescue that they had just witnessed. After about a minute of talking among themselves, each one of them held up a paddle with their score. From his place in the back, Toshinori couldn't see the score, but it was clearly impressive judging by the reaction of Present Mic, who was recording the rescue point scores. They ran down the rest of Midoriya Izuku's footage just in case, but there would be no more points for him.

"Examinee Midoriya Izuku, 60 rescue points." Present Mic called.

All together, it was an incredible score, the highest they had seen thus far. 96 points total shot him to the top of the board. And, with his passing score in the written exam, he had pretty much guaranteed his acceptance into U.A.

"That has to be the luckiest fluke I've ever seen." A voice said next to Toshinori and he turned around to look. Aizawa had appeared next to him like a ghost. But Toshinori was not really shocked by Aizawa's ability to appear anywhere.

"What was that?" Toshinori asked.

"He is strong. I don't doubt that." Aizawa commented. "But with all due respect, have you been so busy doing television interviews and signing autographs to teach him how to use his own power without destroying his body? Or is your son just too lazy to accomplish even the most basic quirk control that a 10 year old would have?"

In the past year, Toshinori had come more to terms with the fact that he was a better hero than he was a teacher. Not a day went by that he did not feel that Izuku's struggles with controlling One for All were his fault. He could handle the criticism against his abilities as a teacher, but he would not stand anyone calling his son lazy.

"Cast doubts on my abilities as a teacher if you must." Toshinori said, a little coldly. "But don't you dare call my son lazy. He has been training for this since he was he was in elementary school. The super strength quirk that he inherited from me is a tough one to master."

"Is that so?" Aizawa asked, although he sounded like he didn't believe Toshinori.

"For the last few years, he's followed a training schedule that would impress nearly any pro hero out there." Toshinori said firmly. "Izuku's failings are not his own. They are mine for being unable to recognize the trouble he was going to have with my quirk."

Aizawa shrugged. "Perhaps you are telling me the truth. Perhaps not. I'll give you fair warning, All Might." Aizawa met his eyes with a level gaze. Toshinori couldn't help but be impressed. Very few people had the courage to do that, especially now that his eyes were so deeply shadowed. "Hope that your son does not end up in my homeroom class, because if he does end up there and you are lying… I don't care who his father is, I'll expel him."

"That's… a little harsh, don't you think?" Toshinori asked, a little shocked.

Aizawa simply shrugged and walked away without answering him.

Present Mic, who had heard the whole conversation, walked over to All Might. "Sorry about that. Eraser's always been a little… expulsion happy. Every time he gets a new freshman homeroom class, about a quarter of them are expelled before the first month is over."

"Why?" Toshinori asked. Having just been a guest teacher before, he had never been privy to the way the regular U.A. teachers ran their classes. And he had certainly never known classes well enough to know when students were lost. But he had always thought that his classes were all full, even Aizawa's former homeroom classes.

"He won't say." Present Mic said. "But, if you ask me, I think it's to clear spaces for the kids that he finds worthy in the General studies program. Did you know that when Aizawa first got accepted into U.A., it was through General studies? He worked hard and got transferred to the Heroics program."

Toshinori had not known that about Eraserhead, but Eraserhead had not been in school when All Might was in school. The entrance exam had been fighting robots ever since he was a student, and it made sense that Aizawa had not been able to pass that entrance exam with his quirk.

Aizawa probably watched every year as students slipped through the cracks because of their quirks being ineffective for combat or against robots. These were potential heroes getting punted aside into the General studies program. Now Toshinori knew why Aizawa would be so willing to expel Hero course students that he found unworthy to make way for those General studies students that he felt were worthy.

Toshinori understood the reasoning, but that didn't mean that he would accept his son being punted aside. Izuku was not lazy. He was working as hard as anyone to master an extremely difficult quirk. And Toshinori was absolutely sure that if Izuku ended up in his homeroom class, he would be able to show Aizawa that.

* * *

 **LES: The next chapter is going to be the last one of this story. For a while, I thought that this was going to be the last chapter, because I didn't really know a good stopping point. Then when I wrote up to this part, I realized that this was a good stopping point. So you guys get one more chapter. Let's see… things to go over…**

 **The way I see it, there was almost no way that Izuku wouldn't get easily the highest score in the test. After all, only 10 points separated him from the top scorer in the anime/manga: Bakugou. Adding in just a couple of villain points easily put Izuku on top. You go, Midoriya!**

 **After next chapter I'm going to take a week long break to recharge my writing batteries before I start posting the sequel on the same schedule.**

 **I'm going to update the pairing list, because I've made a couple of changes to the pairing list. That will also be updated in the first chapter. Here is a brief note of the changes:**

 **Toshinori/Inko will no longer be happening as a romantic relationship. They will be friends, and Izuku's parents, but nothing more than that.**

 **Bakugou/Kirishima will no longer be happening. This will be replaced by a hinted relationship between Kirishima/Ashido. (Yeah... _that_ chapter infected me...)**

 **The amount of romance has not changed, it will still be set at 'low'.**


	21. Chapter 21

**LES: First off, long author's note incoming. I'm sorry. To be honest, I'm a little shocked by the reviews from the last chapter. I had no idea that Aizawa was such a contentious character in the series. I think only one person went as far as saying that they hated Aizawa, but almost every other review I received said that he's a horrible teacher or that he should get fired. I am a little shocked. I have not been in the fandom very long, but the only thing I've ever been exposed to is "Dadzawa", and thus thought that most of my readers would feel the same way about him.**

 **Aizawa is tired, strict, logical, and has a habit of expelling half of his class in a single go. I can't ignore these things about his character, especially since I am going to take advantage of his expulsion habits to bring in fan favorite character (at least I think he's a fan favorite character… not so sure anymore after this Aizawa thing...) Shinsou. I was going to reveal this during the Author's Notes of the first chapter of the next story, but I'll do it now. Mineta is going to be expelled day one. He is going to get last place in the fitness test and be unable to convince Aizawa that he has a noble reason for being a hero… because to be frank, he doesn't. With that space in Class 1-A open, things will be set up for Shinsou to join the class after his performance catching Aizawa's eye in the Sport's Festival.**

 **I don't want to discount the opinions of my reviewers, especially the ones who are teachers and know that Aizawa probably should be fired from his job… if he worked in a normal teaching gig. The only defense I have is Aizawa saying that U.A. doesn't follow normal school curriculum and that he is allowed to run his class however he wants.**

 **I _know_ that this is far from a vindication against any flaws in his teaching methods. I think that some of my readers wanted me to have Aizawa be punished somehow for his teaching methods and I'm sorry to say to those that this is will not be the case. Aizawa is not a villain in this story. This is a "Dadzawa" story and I am an Aizawa fan.**

 **He might not be the best classic teacher archetype (just like All Might is not technically speaking the best mentor...), but I believe that he does grow to care for his students. In canon, he doesn't expel a single one of them, even though everyone is baffled that he hasn't expelled at least one. He stands up to the press for the sake of his most difficult student. He literally fights until his body is utterly destroyed for the sake of his students in the USJ in a feat not dissimilar to Izuku's rescue of Uraraka during the entrance exam. He knew he had to stand his ground and defend his students, so it didn't matter that he was at a severe disadvantage. He was going to do it, because it was the right thing to do.**

 **I think I could fill up an entire chapter-length about my rants about Aizawa and how much I love him. But this post is getting far too long. I just want to say that I have seen your reviews and I understand the concerns that many of you have. They are just not going to play a part in this story.**

 **Chapter 21**

* * *

Finally, the big day had arrived. Both Inko and Izuku got texts from Toshinori saying that he was on his way with Izuku's test results. Inko pulled out all the stops for dinner and the centerpiece was katsudon, which is Izuku's favorite food. Despite the smell of the food causing his empty stomach to rumble, Izuku wasn't quite sure if he could stomach the food without knowing if he had passed.

The twenty or so minutes that it took for Toshinori to arrive felt like an eternity. Izuku couldn't help but hover by the front door, waiting for his father, despite how rude it was. But Toshinori didn't seem very surprised to find Izuku at the front door waiting for him. Izuku's eyes immediately trained upon the thin envelope in his father's hand.

No matter what sort of school you were trying to get into, a thin envelope is never a good sign and Izuku's heart sank.

Toshinori could see the shame on Izuku's face, and he placed his hand on the top of his head. He had no desire to prolong Izuku's uncertainty any longer. "It's not what you think." Toshinori told him with a smile. "Principal Nezu gave me permission to give you your results personally. These are just a copy of your scores." He placed his hand on Izuku's shoulder and led him through to the living room. "Your mother made katsudon?" Toshinori asked.

"To celebrate, whether I got in or not." Izuku explained. "But I'm not sure if..."

"You're going to want to eat in a minute. Sit down." Toshinori said. Izuku nervously took a seat next to his father. "You passed the written test."

That helped Izuku feel a little better, but that didn't address the one thing that he had been most worried about. And Toshinori not addressing that right away caused Izuku to think that the worst had happened. He had passed the written test, but not the practical. His villain score had not been enough to pass. His eyes fell down to the floor between his feet. Now he didn't just feel sick. He literally felt like he was going to throw up. "I'm so sorry I failed you." He whispered.

"You didn't fail me at all." Toshinori said. "You got 36 points off the villains. But you got more points than that because of your actions with the large robot."

"So… was Momo right?" Izuku asked. "Did Present Mic lie about the large robot being worth zero points?" He was starting to feel a little bit better as he felt hope rising up within him.

"No. The big robot is worth zero points. No. It's because of what you did for the girl. You went back to rescue her, despite the great cost for yourself. The entire purpose of the U.A. hero course is to train the next generation of heroes. How could they reject a prospective hero who is willing to risk it all for the protection of others?" Toshinori smiled and handed over the envelope. Izuku took it right away and tore it open.

Just as his father had said, it contained a breakdown of of his score. The written test he had passed. And the practical score was broken down into two different numbers. One was listed as villain points, and the second number was listed as rescue points. Izuku stared in shock. The rescue points were listed at 60, which made his total 96 points.

"Judging just by the practical you have the highest score among the incoming freshmen." Toshinori said with a smile. "Congratulations, my son. You've been accepted into U.A."

Izuku burst into tears and basically collapsed into his father's arms. For a moment, Toshinori froze, and then wrapped his arms around his son. "Why the tears?" He asked, a little playfully.

"I'm just so happy." Izuku sobbed, tightening his grip, but then quickly loosening it again when his father began to start coughing.

Inko had stood at the door of the kitchen, watching the whole thing. "Izuku." She said with a smile.

Izuku finally pulled away from his father, and turned to look at his mother with a bright smile. "I made it into U.A., mom! I did it!"

"I knew you would do it!" Inko said, opening her arms wide for her son. Izuku gladly accepted the invitation. He stood up and rushed to pull his mother into an embrace. Because of his height, he easily managed to pick her up off the ground, spinning her around in happiness. Inko let out a small scream of shock before she accepted the enthusiastic embrace.

After a fierce hug for his mother, Izuku set her down.

"There is one more piece of good news." Toshinori commented. "U.A. wanted to keep it a secret, but they are going to make the announcement very soon, so I see no reason why I shouldn't let you know. The heroics teacher at U.A. has officially retired from all hero work as well as being a teacher. Principal Nezu has agreed to bring me on as the new heroics teacher at U.A."

Instead of being excited, Izuku was only concerned. "Does that mean you are fully retiring as a hero?"

Toshinori rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "Not exactly. I won't… can't… turn my back on someone in need. But I need to be realistic as well. I can only maintain my muscular form in battle for about three hours. I won't stop being a hero, but I need to start taking a step back. Principal Nezu is well aware of this, and that's mainly why he's given me the job."

"It's gonna be kind of weird… having my dad as one of my teachers." Izuku commented.

"Yes, I certainly agree." Toshinori said.

"What if I slip up and call you 'Dad'?" Izuku asked.

"I doubt it will be a problem in the classroom. You are in the habit of still calling me All Might in my muscle form." Toshinori pointed out, unconcerned.

It was still a little weird, but it was good news all around, and Izuku was certainly feeling better than he was just a few minutes ago. And now he was certainly hungry for the katsudon that his mother had made. "Let's eat! I've got my appetite back now!"

"Yes, of course. Are you joining us, Toshinori?" Inko asked, glancing over at him.

"Oh, I guess for a few bites." Toshinori said, following them through to the dining room. He did only eat a few bites, but he stayed there for the whole evening, celebrating their son's achievement.

* * *

The next day, Izuku, Tenya, and Momo all agreed to meet up and discuss the results of their tests now that they all had their results. They met up at a restaurant that was an equal distance away from their houses. Once they found each other at their normal table, it was pretty clear from the smiles on all of their faces that they had all made it.

"You passed?" Izuku asked Tenya, since he all ready knew that Momo had passed. Tenya nodded.

"I was able to do fairly well in the practical. I think I lost some time running away from the zero point robot, but I was able to get a fairly high score." Tenya said.

"So all of you had to face this giant robot?" Momo asked.

"You didn't?" Tenya asked.

"No. We had obstacle races between us and the other recommendation students." Momo answered. "There was really no combat involved. So how did it end up working out with you?" Momo turned to Izuku. "You were really worried that you screwed up when you hurt yourself taking on the giant robot."

In a rare moment, Tenya spat out his drink, hurriedly pressing his napkin to his mouth, and staring at Izuku in open shock. "You did _what_? You actually took on that monster robot?!"

"I… had no choice." Izuku said. "There was a girl in my battle center who got caught under some of the rubble from the big robot destroying the building. She might have gotten crushed. So I went back to help her. I… destroyed the robot, but it broke my arm and my legs." Tenya was staring at Izuku in shock now, his drink completely forgotten. "Anyway, it turns out that the teachers don't just let you in based on villain points, but rescue points as well. I got a lot of rescue points for going back to help the girl. Those points made up for the villain points I lost hurting myself."

"Izuku." Izuku flinched. He had never heard Tenya sound so serious. "We're going to be in U.A. together soon, and I think it's time that you've told us the truth. What is your quirk. Momo and I promise we won't say anything about who your father is if it's that important, but we have to know." He turned to look at Momo. She looked a little nervous, and then sighed.

"We understand that you've wanted to keep it a secret this whole time. But I agree with Tenya. I think we should know. We are going to find out soon anyway."

"Taking on that giant robot by yourself..." Tenya said. "I can't even imagine how powerful your quirk might be..."

Izuku stared down at his drink. He was so used to keeping this secret that I felt kind of odd to say anything. But his friends were right. They would find out once they got to U.A. anyway. Thankfully, there was no need to tell the whole truth about One For All.

"It's a very powerful super strength quirk." Izuku said quietly.

For a moment, no one at the table spoke. And then Momo pulled out her cellphone, unlocked it, and then began typing on it without saying a word. Tenya, who was sitting in the booth next to her, glanced at her screen before looking away with a calm expression.

Finally, Momo seemed to find what she was looking for. But her hands were shaking a little as she showed Izuku the image on her phone. It was a picture of All Might. She put the screen to sleep as soon as Izuku saw the picture and put her phone away.

"Is that your father?" She asked, lowering her voice to a whisper. Both she and Tenya were staring intently at their friend. Izuku glanced around, to make sure that no one was paying attention. He really wished that they were somewhere more private. So he just gave a small, silent nod.

Tenya seemed to be a little more shocked than Momo was. "I almost can't believe it." He whispered. "You are really the son of..."

"Shh!" Izuku shushed him. "If you really want to talk about this, can we please go to my house where we can speak about this privately?"

"Of course." Momo said, dropping some money on the table to cover their drinks. All three friends stood and left.

* * *

Inko started in surprise a little as Izuku and his two friends came into the house. "Good afternoon, you two!" She called, giving them a smile. "Did the two of you get into U.A. just like my Izuku?"

"Yes, we did." Momo answered. Both she and Tenya couldn't help but stare at Izuku's mother a little more than usual. Midoriya Inko was a fairly pretty woman, but she didn't really fit the mold of any of All Might's other known former lovers, nearly all of which were heroes.

"Congratulations. I all ready made some of Izuku's favorite to celebrate his acceptance, but I'm sure that I can whip something up for dinner tonight to celebrate you two getting in as well. If you would like to stay for dinner, that is."

"I would love to, Ms. Midoriya." Momo said, and Tenya agreed with her. Then all three friends went up to Izuku's room. They all knew that Izuku's room was covered in All Might merchandise.

"So do you get all this stuff for free?" Momo asked.

"Well… yes. Almost all of it is gifts from my dad. He thinks its a little weird, but I've admired him from the time before I knew that he was… my father." Izuku said.

"I just don't see how any of this is possible. How could All Might hide having a child?" Tenya said.

"He hides his real name, doesn't he?" Izuku asked rhetorically. "It's not like all of the records say that my father is All Might. My father is listed on those records under his real name. Someone would have to find out All Might's real name in order find out about me."

"How many people know?" Momo asked.

"All of our teachers." Izuku said. "A couple of the people who work for or have worked with All Might in the past. The staff at U.A."

"How do the staff of U.A. know all ready?" Tenya asked.

"I've… been there… several times… over the past couple of years." Izuku said. "I've had a really hard time trying to learn how to control the quirk that I inherited from my father. My body just can't handle my full strength. If I put more than 20 percent of my total power into any one attack, I often break my bones. My dad is friends with the school nurse, who has a really powerful healing quirk. So he took me to her when I hurt myself."

"You were able to take on that giant robot by yourself. Are you… as powerful as your father?" Tenya asked.

"To be honest, if I use all of my power, I'm just a little bit more powerful than he is." Izuku said honestly.

This seemed to be most shocking information. All Might was considered, far and away, the most powerful human being on the planet. Perhaps even the most powerful super strength quirk holder to have ever lived! To hear that their friend was even slightly more powerful… even if it broke his bones…

All bodies eventually adjusted to their quirks. Sure, it seemed that their friend was taking much longer than normal for him to adjust to his, but when he did… the amount of power he would have could be nearly unimaginable.

"So… your mother and All Might..." Momo began nervously.

Izuku stared at her and blushed. "Oh, no! They are not together or anything like that! I've never lied to you about what sort of relationship my parents have. They are two friends who happen to have had a child together. I've had many years to come to terms with the fact that my parents didn't mean to have a child. But both my mom and my dad say that they don't regret that they had me."

"Yes, of course, you've told us this before." Tenya said. "I'm sorry that we have brought it up again."

"Like I said… I'm not bothered by it anymore. My parents don't resent me, and I do have a relationship with my father now."

"So… wow… you actually really know All Might." Tenya said. "And you probably know him better than almost anyone. Do you know his real name and everything?"

"I do." Izuku answered with a small grin. _They have no idea the sort of secrets I know about my father…_ "But, please, you have to promise me that you will not say anything about who my father is at school. We both want to wait until I'm skilled enough with my quirk to defend myself before that secret becomes public knowledge."

"But won't others figure it out like we did?" Tenya asked.

"But we have always known that Izuku is related to a high ranking hero and that he has his father's quirk. Finding out that quirk is super strength is all we needed to narrow it down to All Might. It wouldn't have been very easy if we just knew about the super strength quirk. That is by a large margin the most common quirk for a hero to have. There's about 50 Japanese heroes with super strength that I can think of off the top of my head right now."

"I suppose that makes sense." Tenya said thoughtfully. "Very well, Izuku, we promise that we will keep your secret. And… perhaps… could you introduce us to your father sometime?" He added nervously.

"Oh, yes! I would love to meet the Number One hero!" Momo gasped.

"Don't worry about that. You'll meet him soon enough… at U.A." Izuku said cryptically.

It kind of felt good that his friends now knew a part of his secret and were still accepting of him, even with a small amount of All Might hero worship. Izuku remembered long ago how Momo had told them that people started treating her differently after they found out who her parents were, and he had always worried that his friends would treat him differently. But, they seemed to be accepting… if a little shocked.

And in about two weeks time, they would be starting at U.A. It was a dream come true, and terrifying at the same time.

But one thing was sure. All three of them were on the right paths to become heroes.

And Midoriya Izuku was well on his way to one day taking his father's place as the world's greatest hero.

* * *

 **FIN**

* * *

 **LES: DON'T LET THE WORD FIN FOOL YOU! This story is continuing in the sequel that I will start writing after I take a week long break to recharge my batteries! The main reason that I'm breaking this story up here is because I wanted the first section to be completely accessible to everyone… thus no pairings. No romance. Once we get started at U.A. well… of course with a bunch of teenagers in one place there is going to be relationships developing. But, as I've said many times… I'm too old to be interested in plotting out intense teenage relationship drama. So the relationships are all background and simplistic. So… one week of no writing… the first chapter of the sequel story will be posted… (checks calendar) Friday May 3rd at midnight. I will see you again at that time! Have a happy Easter and a great end of April!**


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